I’ve only recently been playing this one myself, thanks to it being on Xbox cloud gaming. It’s been far too hot recently so cloud gaming made perfect sense. I’d tried a few other games, but none of them hooked me quite as much as this one did. The cute little ranching game about slimes released in 2017.

Of course, I knew of the game. I’d seen Call Me Kevin playing it back in 2019, and it did seem an enjoyable game to me. Then came the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase of 2021 where the sequel was announced. It seemed inevitable that I would be playing the first one at some point. And so a year later, I was.

The gameplay loop right from the off meant finding slimes to keep on the ranch, feeding them to produce plorts – that then are sold for money. The pink slimes are the easiest to look after, but being the most common, their plorts sell for peanuts. As such, there’s a whole host of slimes to encounter. Or I could just stick with the pink ones and pack a coral so much they have no room to move.

It didn’t take long for me to find rock slimes and tabby slimes, meaning more types of plorts to sell, as well as how to make largo slimes. These special slimes act like a fusion of two slimes, whereby one slime eating a plort of another will give it characteristics of that other slime. Including their diet. Speaking of the diet of these slimes…

Pink slimes will eat anything, but other slimes will only eat a particular type of food – whether that be meat, fruit, or vegetables. They’ll also have a favourite food within that type. If fed their favourite, they’ll produce double plorts, so utilising largo slimes (which will give a plort of each slime it has genetics of) and favourite foods, I soon had a good get-rich-quick scheme.

Those beginning slimes still don’t give a huge amount of money for their plorts, though. As such, further exploration was needed. At first, there’s only the starting area to be exploring, but upon encountering gordo slimes – giant variants that will stay in one place – I soon discovered the way to get the keys needed to unlock new areas, and thus find more slimes.

But the dangers of slime ranching mean this visually cute game isn’t without peril. Some slimes will attack randomly. If slimes become hungry, they will turn into feral slimes and become more likely to attack – even the passive slimes – until they are fed. Largo slimes will turn into tarr slimes if they eat a plort not of their genetics. And when there’s three or more types of slime around producing plorts, that can easily happen.

With the 7Zee Rewards Club to bring motivation to want to earn mega money, and the Range Exchange to further fuel exploration, there doesn’t really need to be much in the way of story, but the game provides little drops of character exploration in the form of the Starmail and the notes the previous owner of the ranch left around the world.

The Starmail comes in the form of Casey, a partner of Beatrix (the character the player controls) who contacts regularly to reminisce about their time together and check up on Beatrix. The notes around the world come from Hobson Twillgers, a legendary slime rancher with big ambitions who left them to live with someone he met while ranching. Reading all of these on adventure mode will bring the end credits, but that is not the end of the game.

There are still things I’ve yet to explore, and slimes I’m yet to encounter, but I’ll be enjoying them when I do. And though I know of an endgame, that doesn’t matter to me. I’ll still be having fun even once those credits have rolled. I can easily give this a recommendation, especially with it being on Game Pass. I’m sure the second game releasing to Early Access on September 22nd will also be just as good as this one.

Images Taken From:
Slime Rancher (Original Screenshots)