Eventually, exhaustion sets into every gamer’s brain. Tired of constantly saving the world, blowing an inexhaustible stream of bad guys into a paste, rescuing so many NPC’s in distress, turning in a never-ending stream of fetch quests; the list goes on, and gamers around the world willingly trundle forward ad nauseam with no indication of it ever stopping.
Eventually, we all tire of being the hero, singularly fated to save everything and/or everyone. Enter developer Monomi Park, and their loving crafted game Slime Rancher. Slime Rancher has been the recipient of more awards than most people can list and is currently listed 129th on Steam’s best consumer reviewed games, out of 37,277 released titles offered on the platform.
If the accolades alone aren’t enough to make you look twice, even among the notoriously fickle Steam userbase, the art style ought to. The bright and beautiful world found in ‘Far, Far Range’ that our protagonist, Beatrix LeBeau, explores has character and charm in droves.
Beatrix has inherited the land from Hobson Twillgers, and spends her days exploring the lands and finding new slimes to make a profit with, turning into the core gameplay loop. You find slimes of various types, find their preferred food to feed them, and then you collect ‘plorps’ to sell in the intergalactic market. Beatrix can outfit her base with a large amount of various technologies that allow her to properly manage the various slime types, and to keep them fed.
Some slimes prefer fruits, others take a liking to veggies, and some even prefer other slimes. As gamers join Beatrix in her journey around the ranch and outlying regions, they continue to expand her available equipment as well, allowing her to do even more while out and about.
The experience is a charming endeavor that is wildly different than what many other studios are offering, as Slime Rancher offers a more relaxed exploratory title where pleasure is found in exploration and the growing of a slime-based business.
There are odd parts of a story to be found as well via various mail messages that Beatrix continues to receive (unlock) as her story progresses, although its a bit piecemeal in offering, never totally becoming the focus of anything the player does, and more content to offer flavor to the singular life of slime ranching.
Steam’s current Midweek Madness celebrates the heralded indie game with a 60% price cut, making it $7.99 USD until Friday, November 15th.
