- Slime Rancher has made its way to mobile
- There are so many slimes
- You can explode them
Slime Rancher was first released back on PC in 2017, and it was one of those games that I often saw played, but I didn't actually get the chance to sit down and play. Slime Rancher is a cosy game, but it's one with little direction and a lot of just sucking up slimes and moving them around to new areas. I never quite understood the point! Now, with Slime Rancher 2 out, Slime Rancher has made its way to mobile, so I gave it a go.
I played alongside Robin, who is an actual fan of Slime Rancher and has been for quite some time. She very quickly let me know that my chickens should be fed to the other slimes (not put in their own pen) and that I need to "yeet" specific slimes off the face of the Earth, as I did not have water to fix them once they became tar. This is very helpful advice!
In Slime Rancher, you basically need to run a slime-filled farm, growing your own crops, making sure you have food, and then feeding the slimes that you have in pens so that they give you gems, which you can then put into a machine to gain money. Different slimes produce different gems, which give you different amounts of money. It's pretty easy to understand and play, which bodes well for a cosy-style game.
There are tons of varieties of slimes in Slime Rancher, from your basic colored slime to cat-inspired slimes to slimes that fly around and glow. The world itself feels massive, even on mobile, and you can discover a lot of what you might want to have in your farm. I watched Robin even explode a giant slime and get a box? Not really sure, but it's all a lot of fun.
As someone who hasn't played Slime Rancher before, I quite enjoyed the mobile port. It's clear that the controls are well-designed, the inventory system feels good at the bottom, and the game feels sleek. Both Robin and Amelia, fans in our household, said it was very neat to have Slime Rancher on their mobile phones and announced they'd be playing in the car for the next road trip, which is its own stamp of approval.
For me, I do wish there were more direction beyond the little quests that you get from the slimes in a trenchcoat (yes, that is a real thing). I do find that putting loads of slimes in a weird cube of force fields seems harsh, but at the same time, they don't seem to mind at all.
Slime Rancher review - "Lots of Slimes, little directions"
Whether you have played Slime Rancher before or are new to the game, it's a cosy, slime-farming-filled adventure with a lot of discovery.
Jupiter Hadley
Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, and judges many jams and events. You can find her on Twitter as @Jupiter_Hadley