I’ve spent a looooooot of time with my slimes in Slime Rancher [official site] and watching them bounce and coo as they wiggle free of my corrals and wobble off like determined balloon-toddlers has been a delight. But how does one convert a ball into a creature with such a strong sense of spirit? How do you keep their little slime modifications from becoming a confusing mulch of wings and ears? What happened to the meteor slime? How does Gremlins figure in the design of Slime Rancher’s monsters? And will anyone listen to me when I tell them puddle slimes are actually cuter than tabby slimes???
Let’s do a slime art and design interview with game designer/Monomi Park studio co-founder Nick Popovich and find out… Read the rest of this entry »
When I go to my exercise class in the evening sometimes the matter of what I do for a living comes up in pre-class chat. Usually I can be like, “This is a credible grown-up profession. I absolutely pinky swear this to be true!” The last few days I have spent 30 hours corralling adorable bouncing blobs and selling their poop on the stock market or funnelling it into science. Maybe I’ll pretend I’ve lost my voice at class this evening. But Slime Rancher [official site] is so cute I also want to tell everyone about it! Here’s Wot I Think… Read the rest of this entry »
It sounded like people enjoyed looking round my Subnautica base a while back so I decided to make a video tour of my Slime Rancher [official site] base as well! It’s absolutely full of creatures and resources you won’t discover for ages as well as the more basic parts of the game so SPOILERS AHOY. I’d say only watch it if you don’t want to play the game or if you have played a really significant amount and have seen most things! Read the rest of this entry »
The hosts of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, know neither respite nor shame. This week we have a chat about “replayability” – what games are the most replayable? Why do we always go back to our “comfort games”? Exactly how many hours has Adam spent in Crusader Kings II? Hint: QUITE LOTS. Meanwhile, Pip attempts to cultivate the excrement of wet monsters in Slime Rancher, Adam tells us about his cowardice in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, and I am slumming it with another collectible card game, this time The Elder Scrolls: Legends. We’ve also got some reader questions and comments, all based on replaying old favourites. It’s a theme! Read the rest of this entry »
Slime Rancher [official site], the charmingly frustrating game about capturing and breeding adorable slime creatures who want only to escape and eat everything in sight, will leave early access on August 1st. If you’ve been waiting for a full launch before starting your own ranch to sell dung, draw a pooey circle around that Tuesday. For those who, like Rick Lane, started playing after Slime Rancher hit early access in January 2016, a new early access update recently hit with a new area and slimes. Read the rest of this entry »
As if escaping their pens to chase your chickens and devour each others’ faeces weren’t trouble enough, now those adorably pesky slimes are messing with the fabric of the universe. A big Slime Rancher [official site] update launched this week to add a new area housing a troublesome new breed of slime, the quantum slimes. Good luck wrangling a creature which exists across several potential timelines. Oh, and the game’s on sale this weekend too. Read the rest of this entry »
Monomi Park’s Slime Rancher [official site], that wacky and wiggly slime wrangling game, this week received a significant update in the Slime Science Update, available now. In it you can find numerous slimes and the basics of Slime Science itself. It is much stickier than regular science, you see, and you must let the game educate you before you can be trusted with it. Read the rest of this entry »
Slime Rancher [official site] is the cutest game about selling shit ever made. Admittedly it’s probably the only game about selling shit ever made, but I don’t know for certain and googling “Shitselling games” tends to bring up commercial flops like Bulletstorm rather than games that literally involve the flogging of faecal matter.
If you’ve seen anything of Monomi Park’s debut, which slithered onto Early Access a couple of weeks back leaving a silvery trail in its wake, then its love for excrement may come as a surprise. Aesthetically Slime Rancher is a thundering wave of colour, like a circus struck by a tsunami, and the eponymous slimes are so clearly designed to be childfriendly that it’s surprising to discover they have any orifices at all.
The best thing about Slime Rancher’s [official site] trailer is the sound effects. Lots of “wheeee!” and “haha!” and gloopy landing noises. On the auditory cuteness spectrum I would put it somewhere between Loco Roco and Yoshi Touch & Go.
