After dozens of hours dedicated to wrangling balls of living goop in developer Monomi Park’s previous life sim, it feels great to be back with Slime Rancher 2 – a sequel that retains all of the original’s stickiness (in more ways than one) and ridiculous charm. It may feel like more of a Slime Rancher 1.5 at its early access release, but its presentation is still a night-and-day improvement over the original, the new slimes and areas are wonderful and unique, and movement and exploration both feel much better. All those upgrades combine to create a satisfying and zen-like adventure that made me want to retire from the rat race of battle royales and action games to settle down on a sticky pasture and live a simple life among the slimes.
If you’ve played the first Slime Rancher, even a little, then nothing about this work-in-progress sequel is likely to surprise you. As with the first entry, you’ll run around chaotic and beautiful otherworldly environments as you collect resources and slimes, then head back to your home base to turn your jelly friends into profit just like Ayn Rand intended. You’ll also fight gross, world-consuming Tarr slimes, upgrade your base of operations and your equipment, and fall off cliffs when you forget you don’t have enough stamina to power your jetpack. The good news is that this formula of exploring, farming, and experimenting with your slimes and their crossbred permutations remains incredibly compelling, and it’s easy to lose track of time while hanging out with this lovable gang of invertebrates. On the other hand, Slime Rancher 2 plays it so safe that it took me a while to even notice some of the changes it’s made.
At this early stage there aren’t too many new things added – in fact, in some ways there are actually fewer options than in the previous entry, like a reduced number of unique areas and slimes (something the first game bolstered over its own early access period). That said, most of the slimes that are currently MIA were probably strategically cut fat, and the slimes that have been added are more than fair trades for those we lost; I don’t particularly miss the irritating, radioactive Rad slimes, for example, while the new Ringtail slimes that skitter about killing things and get turned into stone if they get caught in the sun are hilarious little troublemakers. Still, it’s weird that obvious stuff that would have been great to have at launch, like NPCs occupying the world or multiplayer options, have been completely eschewed for now.
In its current form, Slime Rancher 2 is fairly light on content.
In its current form, Slime Rancher 2 is fairly light on content in general. I began to feel like I was out of things to do after about a dozen hours, and I encountered areas that were incomplete or blocked off in some of my first moments of exploration. Luckily farming for slimes, gathering resources to upgrade your ranch, and exploring what areas you can access are all such wildly captivating activities that I spent well over that time just optimizing my farm and looking for secrets. You can also get a lot of mileage out of the returning crossbreeding mechanic, which merges two types of slimes together to create interesting and often ill-advised combinations, like the exploding crystal abominations I Frankensteined into existence. That’s a rabbit hole that only got deeper over the course of the first game’s developement, and I’m excited to see if this adventure follows suit.
But despite the familiarity, it’s impossible not to notice this sequel’s higher level of polish. If the original was a compelling and memorable proof of concept, then Slime Rancher 2 comes much closer to a final product that benefits from years of fine-tuning – even in this early state. This is most immediately recognizable in its presentation, which has been improved substantially. Slimes have a ton of personality now, serving as irresistibly weird creatures to chase – that includes the new cotton slimes that bounce around and joyously eat all your vegetables, as well as returning crystal slimes that come off as mischievous bullies in this iteration who want nothing more than to break everything in their path. The areas are beautiful and diverse too (even if there are only three of them so far), and the UI, music, sound effects, and lighting make everything easier on the eyes and ears, to the point where it hardly even feels like an early access game on the surface. Really the only issues I ran into were occasional bugs, like the all-too-familiar falling through the floor and seeing under the world thing, but those were easy to resolve with a simple reboot and relatively rare.
Jetpacking around the hub areas is more fun than ever.
The movement mechanics also have some notable improvements, making jetpacking around the hub areas more fun than ever. Running around is really smooth and platforming from place to place is more precise (which is a good thing, because it plays a larger role now) even if the woefully tiny stamina meter that shares its energy with your jetpack is still a constant annoyance. And while there aren’t many of them yet, each area is impressively large, has lots of verticality to explore, and even has a few puzzles to solve as you hunt for slimes in the wild. I particularly enjoyed the new lava area that can be found in the Ember Valley, which required more thoughtful platforming and offered more danger than past locations. It’s a little disappointing that the main obstacle they throw at you remains unchanged from the first game though, as you’ll still be overfeeding massive Gordo slimes to unlock new areas and shortcuts. This is certainly a fun little mechanic, but I’ve seen it a lot already and there are few fresh challenges to complete alongside it.
The main enemy of Slime Rancher, Tarr slimes also make a return, and thankfully they’re more cruel and intimidating than ever before. Previously, this mob of overfed and corrupted slimes were a fairly uncommon and easily handled danger, but now they’re all over the place, spread almost instantly, and can become a serious problem if they’re let loose in your farm. That said, they still aren’t very threatening to you personally as they don’t do much damage and are easily killed by being thrown off a cliff or splashed with water – or, better yet, just avoided altogether. But since they infect everything around them, they pose a real threat to your precious slime resources and can absolutely defile the land you’re trying to tame. I was happy to see a little bit more challenge added to what I think of as the video game equivalent of a spa day, even if it’s only a minor increase.
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