Release Date: 01/08/2017
Played On: Win
Available On: Lin / Mac / PS4 / Win / XBO
Time Played: 6h 59m
Progress: Reached the "end-gate", then retired.
Developer: Monomi Park
Publisher: Monomi Park / Skybound Games
I often ask myself "how much game is enough game?", and I often come up with the same answer. In fact I don't think it's limited to games, but if you're trying to tell a story or deliver an experience, it needs to be as long as it needs to be. Can you make the point within an hour, or over a couple of pages? Maybe you need a rolling epic to clearly provide the perspective needed to appreciate a fable. Either way, I often find myself thinking that a game might have overstayed its welcome in one way or another.
Although, games are a special category in media as their nature is specifically different to others. Make no mistake, games can be art, but not all games are art. There are plenty of titles out there in the world that offer nothing beyond a stimulating and challenging mechanical experience with no narrative context or purpose to speak of. How then, are we able to determine whether or not a systems-focused game has outstayed its welcome? Perhaps it's not as easy as it seems, and the real answer lies in our own perspective and interests as game-players.
It's no surprise that I'm not one of those gamers who will be interested in mechanics and systems alone. In fact, I've come to realise that I need at least the tiniest slither of context and plot to make playing a game feel worthwhile and interesting. It's not enough to just have a clever physics system, or excellent platforming mechanics; what I really need is a purpose for my actions, and one that I can relate to at that.
For what it's worth, Slime Rancher is a pretty great game with a lot to offer, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it, which led me to the preceding train of thought. After all, this is a game with a lot of interesting things to do and places to explore, but none of it ever felt engaging enough to eek every bit of gameplay from the experience. In fact, much like many other games with varying levels of story and narrative to back them up, this is another example of the grind never feeling worth any of the results.
Don't let me put you off though, as I said: this is a really good game with a lot to offer. There's even a bit of a story to follow, but the best part is the creativity on display as you explore and discover more and more of the world around you. if there's one thing that really does excite me about Slime Rancher, it's the originality of its world and progression, which wears its influences on its sleeve, but delivers a fresh take on the whole "farming" genre.
The basic premise is that you're on an alien planet and have inherited a ranch from an uncle or someone (I can't quite recall the finer details). Turns out that the areas around the ranch are full of slime creatures that can be harvested and farmed in order to harvest the "plorts" they "drop" on the ground. The rarer the slime, the more valuable their plorts will be, but successfully looking after and farming those rare slimes can be troublesome and downright difficult.
As with any diverse fauna, different types of slimes require different foods to keep them satiated, as well as specific environmental conditions in which they thrive. Some prefer the darkness of a cave, while others yearn for sunlight. More common slimes are happy to eat carrots and other vegetables that are easily grown on the farm, as opposed to those that prefer to eat chickens that are much harder to keep and breed.
What's more, each plot of land where you are able to keep slimes and grow feed, costs money to upgrade in order to become more effective. At first you have to pick up all those tasty plorts by hand, but after saving up enough you can expand their pen to include a plort collector that does the hard work on your behalf. Getting sick of your slimes jumping on top of each other to climb over the fence of their enclosure and escape? Just pop a ceiling on there to keep everything contained. Suffice to say that there are a number of ways to upgrade your plots with all that hard earned cash you make from selling plorts.
At the same time you have an inventory of your own that includes tools and abilities to make life easier working on the ranch. Your main tool is a big vacuum thing that sucks up anything in its path, including slimes, plorts, veggies, and just about everything else that's loose in the environment. Inventory space can be expanded and upgraded, while you can also gain the ability to use and upgrade a jetpack, which makes getting around a lot easier.
Thankfully, getting around is one of the main things you'll be doing in Slime Rancher, as exploration and discovery are essential to get ahead in the game and make any sort of progress towards the conclusion. Yes, there is s conclusion to the game, but by the time I figured out what I needed to do in order to unlock said ending, I was already at my limit of slime ranching.
Exploration really is the most fun you can have in the game, as new locations harbour different types of slimes to be caught and farmed, along with unique bonuses and one-off discoveries. The slimes you find closest to the ranch are friendly and pretty dumb, so it's easy to gather them up and shove them in a pen with very little resistance. The further you roam though, the more dangerous slime ranching becomes.
There are slimes that explode every few seconds, so being close by will hurt. There are others that grow spikes, and others that are balls of hot magma. One of the rarer slimes to find is actually invisible, but for a distorted sheen in the environment that can be super easy to miss. However, believe me when I say that exploring and discovering all these different slimes and how they act is definitely the most fun you can have in this game. Especially because once you get them back to the ranch, you're faced with the arduous task of looking after the damned things and making sure they don't ruin your carefully crafted ecosystem.
As it happens, not every slime is created equal, and many don't get along with other slimes very well at all. In fact, the first time you let a different type of slime loose in a pen full of other slimes, you will experience the dread that comes from finding out that this new kind of slime takes great pride in eating and murdering everything in the same pen.
Looking after one or two pens of slimes is pretty straight forward and even a little bit fun, as you get rewarded for feeding them their favourite food and taking good care of them. Once you open up a few different pen locations and environments and have to be running from one side of the ranch to the other, things get a little more annoying.
The bit that peeved me off the most was that most of the rarer slimes need to be fed chickens if you want to cash in on their rare plorts. However, chickens are the most difficult food source to farm and reproduce at a fast enough rate to keep up with the demands of these fancy slimes. It got to the stage where I just ignored all of my "special" slimes and left them to their own devices, which basically meant that they got pissed off and started killing each other because they were hungry or something.
Therein lies the real grind of Slime Rancher, as you eventually reach a point where you've explored and discovered all that you can find without any tough progression to overcome. At some point you start to need those rare plorts and slimes to get the cash needed to actually progress, but farming them is a pain in the ass, and relying on more common slimes is a complete grind by comparison.
I even gave up on feeding the huge slimes that can be found in certain spots around the world. They each desire a specific food, and after you've shot the right amount down their throat, they explode and shower you with crates full of goodies. Except that the goodies aren't all that good and are often just a bunch of the same food that you already fed to the fat guy before he exploded anyway.
Perhaps the problem with Slime Rancher is that there's a definite grind wall that raises its head as soon as you've explored the (decently sized) world and found the literal door that leads to the end game. I approached that large barrier to find that it required one of just about every plort I'd encountered up to that point in order to get it open, and I let out a long sigh before getting out of there for good.
I was happy to reach the obvious end game, but the obstacle presented to me was much greater than I cared to tackle at that point. Even as a gamer who loves a final boss, or a culmination of everything that came before, this still asked too much of me. Then again, I'm also the kind of gamer who retires games like Stardew Valley, because the juice never feels like it's worth the squeeze. There's something about the repetitive nature of the game's mechanics, along with no real context or purpose for what you're doing, that really leaves me wanting.
Thus, I didn't get to the end of Slime Rancher, but somewhat paradoxically, I enjoyed my time with the game. It was a lot of fun to explore the world and find different slimes living in different environments. Discovering all their unique quirks and creative behaviours was interesting and rewarding, as each slime has its own identity and stays away from being a carbon copy of any other. Unfortunately though, that's where my enjoyment stopped and I really couldn't face spending more time grinding through the horrible farming loop of feeding and tending to the rarer slimes in my collection. What I would have given for an alternate way to reach the end game.
I have no doubt that this is a game that will appeal to a lot of people, and indeed it already has. In fact, part of me wonders if it would have appealed to me more if I knew it was a grindy farming game from the start. After all, I'm no stranger to grindy farm games and I enjoy them a little more than most probably do. Slime Rancher isn't one of those that I enjoyed a whole lot though, as it lacked any kind of purpose, even though it felt like it needed something to entice me further. Couple that with some lacklustre farming systems that were more annoying than enjoyable, and here we are.
Perhaps there's nothing wrong with retiring a game early anyway, as I still had a bunch of fun exploring Slime Rancher's world. Is it worse off because I didn't want to finish it? Or does it still have merit because I had fun, even if only for a while. Either way, the fact that this game outstayed its welcome was a bit of a bummer. it probably could have been saved if it reduced the amount of stuff it required you to do by about a third.
(apologies for the awful screenshots in this post - I just didn’t manage to get anything good - sorry about that)