Slime Rancher - Plort is a Great Word

Slime Rancher

As mentioned before on this blog I don't usually play games in early access for various reasons, but once and a while I hear that a game is fully featured enough that it's worth giving a go. Slime Rancher is one of those games. At the time (about a year ago) I more or less completed the content that was offered in the early access version and decided to wait on playing any more until the full game. As of August 1 Slime Rancher has been released and so I loaded it up again to check it out. Hour later into a new play through I was reminded how good Slime Rancher is.

Slime Rancher is made up of a combination of farming, exploration and economy mechanics. The basics involve you running around the various environments and sucking up the slimes, with your vacpack, that live there. You take them back to your farm and drop them into special pens you have built. Once there you feed them and they poop out little plorts that you sell for cash to buy more pens and other upgrades. All the while exploring further and further outwards from your farm. There isn't a ton of urgency and it's a nice relaxing feedback loop.

Initially there doesn't seem to be much depth to Slime Rancher, but it doesn't take long before you see how involved even the simple act of keeping some slimes in your ranch. First you need to make a pen, which each have quite a few options (each costing cash) that you can add on. Then you need to find the slimes you want, but putting multiple types of slimes in the same pen can lead to disastrous outbreaks of Tarr slimes that eat all your other slimes. You also have to secure a food source for the slimes, each eating only one kind (from fruit, veggies, meat) but also having a specific preference (such as Pogofruit) that if fed will increase its plort output. So you will need to dedicate some of your limited farm space to growing their food. Are you hand feeding or do you build a feeder? Auto-plort collector or sucking them up by hand? Fertilizer for the farm to grow faster? Does the slime have special living conditions to take into account or behavior that requires additional attention? Are you going to cross breed it with another slime to save space (cross-slimes have the aspects and plorts of both parents)? It really goes on and on.

All the time you are collecting the plorts, taking them to the plort market and selling for cash (called newbucks) to afford all the upgrades to your ranch, including unlocking additional ranch areas as well as personal upgrades to your vacpack and other equipment. Everyday the prices of the different plorts go up and down in the market so you wait and watch for when they are at the best before selling. But what do you do in the meantime with all these plorts? Store them...in silos that cost more money and take up more precious space.

While this is going on you are exploring further out from your farm to new areas that contain new and different slimes, food and secrets. Searching for Gordo slimes to feed till they burst and leave you with keys (to open new areas) and other goodies. Dealing with wild hazardous slimes. Seeking out treasure pods. Looking for map markers to help you find your way and notes left behind to get more story.

There is a lot to this game. When I stopped playing last year they had just released an entire additional system of Slime Science allowing you do use plorts and other rare resources to build gadgets and more that I barely touched at the time and just haven't gotten to in my newest play through. You are also getting emails from friend and family that build out the story, working on making sure you have the daily items needed for the Range Exchange and more. It's one of those games where its very easy to become distracted with "oh just one more thing" and then you've played for 3 hours.

But in Slime Rancher there is no rush. No panic (well baring a Tarr infestation). You just take it at your own pace. So you miss a daily Range Exchange or forgot to check market prices on a given day...no biggie there is more tomorrow. With no time limits it becomes easy to just enjoy the mechanics they give you without pressure. Relax and farm some slimes. Collect some plorts. Easy like a Sunday morning.