Slime Rancher Review

Slime Rancher is an indie game that seemingly came out of nowhere. Though it had relatively little chatter surrounding it before release, it's becoming widely popular thanks to word of mouth. If you're interested in life sims, you might wonder if this game is worth your time. The good news is that Slime Rancher is exactly what's promised by its premise.

Concept

Slime Rancher puts players in the shoes of a slime farmer, an individual who catches and breeds slimes to sell. In other words, you're looking at a farming life sim that puts a focus on a kind of very gentle monster-catching. Think of this as sort of a 3D Harvest Moon, but instead of interacting with villagers you'll spend your time trying to figure out how to combine slimes. It's not exactly a novel concept, but it's still rare enough that most players will be interested enough to see it through for a few hours.

Graphics & Audio

The best word to describe the graphics of Slime Rancher is 'charming'. It's an absolutely adorable game, from the architecture of the farm pieces to the design of the slimes themselves. The fun, anime-esque design does verge on saccharine, but it's all functional enough to ensure that it never actually grates on players. It's hard to say if these graphics could work with any other type of game, but they definitely work very well with Slime Rancher.

The audio is not quite as memorable as the visuals, but the soundscape is still quite nice. The sound effects work well enough for game-play and the ambient noise is relaxing, so it's hard to think of the audio as doing anything other than its job. It's not quite unforgettable, but the audio is definitely a nice overall addition to the game.

Game Play

The game-play in Slime Rancher is fairly simple. You're working on the kind of loop that anyone who has ever played a life sim already knows - go out, do the thing, upgrade something else, and use that upgrade to do a little bit more. In Slime Rancher, catching and breeding slimes allows you to upgrade your farm, which in turn allows you to do more than your slimes. It's not a revolutionary loop, but it is one to which players can become quickly addicted. It's simple and repetitive, but it's also very relaxing at the same time.

Where the gameplay excels, though, is at keeping players invested. There are no giant difficulty curves that make you give up, and all of the elements are introduced gently enough that they feel natural. You'll never reach a point in this game where you feel like you can't play - just points at which you might have to work a little harder. Slime Rancher may not look like much from the outside, but it has the basic mechanics of its genre down as well as any of the genre leaders.

Conclusion

Slime Rancher is an excellent entry into the life-sim genre. Though it has a very repetitive game-play loop, that loop is made bearable by excellent design choices and a soothing atmosphere. Though this isn't an AAA release, it deserves every bit of popularity that it has gained.

Slime Rancher is a farming sim with a twist, one that's as much about relaxation as it is about improving your slime farm.