The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
The game is played in an open world and from a first-person perspective. The player controls a character named Beatrix LeBeau, a rancher who moves to a planet far from Earth called the Far Far Range to live the life of a "slime rancher", which consists of constructing her ranch and exploring the world of the Far Far Range in order to collect, raise, feed, and breed slimes. Slimes are gelatinous living organisms of various sizes and characteristics. To progress she has notes left by the former owner of the ranch that help her on her journey through the Far Far Range.
The game's main economic aspect revolves around feeding slimes the appropriate food items so that they produce "plorts", which can then be sold in exchange for Newbucks, which can be used to purchase upgrades to the rancher's equipment or farm buildings. With the exception of the basic pink slime, slimes will only eat one of the three types of food; fruit, veggie, or meat. Each slime also has a favorite food, which will lead the slime to produce twice the amount of plorts when eaten. The player moves the character around a variety of environments and is able to collect a variety of slimes, food items, and plorts by sucking them up with their vacuum tool (called a "Vacpack", a portmanteau of vacuum and backpack).
Development
Development of Slime Rancher started in Popovich's apartment. As Popovich was an artist and designer rather than a programmer, he relied on other people's code to create a prototype of the game. He eventually enlisted technical director Mike Thomas to help with the programming. They worked on the game for eight hours a day, a practice Popovich used with employees of Monomi Park to avoid crunch.
The game was initially due to enter early access after a year but was delayed by six months.
Reception
The Early Access version of the Slime Rancher received generally positive reviews. Heather Alexandra from Kotaku noticed some bugs, but gave the game a positive review, saying that "I'm not usually a fan of games with catharsis but when I return to my bright and goofy farm at the end of the day? I can't help but smile as wide as my slimy little friends." [sic] Steve Neilsen from Games Mojo awarded it 4.5 out of 5 stars, stating that "Slime Rancher is fun and addictive game, with a fun premise and cute creatures. The cartoon style graphics look amazing, and gameplay is clever and full of cute."
The full release of the game received generally favorable reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic, with reviewers saying it had the ability to keep you hooked for hours. Reviewers also said it was relaxing and cathartic, but quite repetitive, and that it successfully taps into the addictive nature of farming simulators.
