Slime Rancher, a fun game for all ages.

Slime Rancher is a great game which both myself and my son have enjoyed playing. Gameplay involves exploring a strange world, farming crops and chickens to feed a variety of cute slimes in order to harvest Plorts. Plorts have a wide variety of uses back home on earth and selling them via the Plort Market will be your primary source of income, you also use them for Slime Science to produce various helpful gadgets eventually. One cool aspect of Slime Rancher is feeding Plorts of one type to a different kind of slime to make a Largo slime which is a larger hybrid of two slime types.

If a child who scares easily is playing

If you’re playing this game with a younger child who scares a little easy it might be best to play on casual mode which disables Tarr slimes as whilst it’s not particularly daunting it can be a little much for some.

There will still be the threat of hostile slimes (the first of which you’ll encounter are rock slimes) so they may need help from time to time but these slimes tend to just hit and do a small amount of damage, and make a hit noise. My son found these startling at first but once he figured out he could just vacuum them up and shoot them away or just run straight past them he was all good.

Adventure Mode

Adventure mode is likely the mode many people will start on, you’ll receive mail periodically from friends, companies and other ranchers (NPCs) and discover beacons which progress the story. Some of these messages will give you tips and hints, others are purely for the sake of story. One thing I quite like is that it’s quite take it or leave it with the story side of things, you can explore and progress without paying any attention to the story if you so choose but there is definitely the odd interesting revelation in some of the beacons. It will likely take you less than 20 hours to complete Adventure Mode, however even upon completion you can continue playing your game as there is still a lot to explore and unlock.

Progression

Progression in Slime Rancher is gated a few ways, the primary way of progressing will initially be searching for Gordo slimes which are massive slimes that you’ll need to find and feed till they burst. Each of these slimes will only eat certain types of foods so producing a variety of food products on your farm is quite helpful, however you can find every food item whilst exploring (which is actually how you discover and begin producing new food types on your ranch) so you can always forage for them if you prefer. Gordo slimes can drop slime keys which unlock doors you’ll find around the world many of which grant access to new areas of the map.

Newbucks (Coins) are the primary currency in Slime Rancher and many upgrades to structures on your base, your equipment, as well as sections of the ranch require a quantity of Newbucks, some of these upgrades you’ll either need or greatly benefit from purchasing.

Slime Science is unlocked by purchasing The Lab section of the ranch. You’ll need to use Newbucks to unlock blueprints or you’ll need to find them in Treasure Pods then you can use various materials collected in the game to produce helpful gadgets. It’s not explicitly necessary to use or unlock this section but it is quite helpful.

Treasure Pods are hidden throughout the world, once you’ve unlocked the Lab you should be able to buy a Treasure Cracker MK I to open these and get some (possibly) new resources and blueprints.

What to do after completing Adventure mode?

Personally I had a lot of Slime Science to unlock via treasure pods, and I still have plenty to unlock on the other ranches, there’s also a few other bits and pieces that you can complete that may not be immediately obvious but if you’ve read through the messages and noticed the visual cues you find in late game areas there’s plenty of hints.

Xbox Game Pass

This game was previously available on Xbox Game Pass however was removed in the past week or so, at the time of writing only Slime Rancher 2 is available on Game Pass as both a PC and a Xbox Series S|X title (so if you’ve got a regular Xbox One you’ll need an Ultimate subscription to play it via cloud gaming).

Conclusion

Slime Rancher is a fun game it’s quirky, and relaxing and there’s a good amount of content. Sometimes slimes are a bit cheeky and get out of their pens which results in chaos but that’s all part of the fun. Exploration is often rewarded, the story is largely optional, the game is a little grindy at times but nothing too severe.

I didn’t encounter any game breaking bugs (or any noticeable bugs for that matter) which is excellent for a modern game, this was true both on PC and Xbox for the Game Pass and Steam versions of the game. Slime Rancher is a great game which I don’t hesitate to recommend if it sounds like your kind of game!