Slime Rancher 2 Review – Iteration and Evolution

When the original Slime Rancher was first released all the way back in 2017, it was praised for how well it offers players a sense of relaxation while still being out on an adventure. 2022 then saw the Early Access release of Slime Rancher 2, and now, after three years’ worth of updates, it is finally officially out with a 1.0 release. Slime Rancher 2 isn’t a radical departure from its predecessor. Rather, it acts as more of a refinement on core ideas that were first introduced in the original game. And thanks to years of iteration and updates following community feedback, Slime Rancher 2 has been deemed as good enough to be officially released.

“With the barest of narratives you can possibly get, you’re then thrown into the Slime Conservatory, which serves as your new base of operations, and are given a single task: explore the island.”

Much like its predecessor, and even other titles that are often considered to fall under the “cosy game” umbrella, Slime Rancher 2 doesn’t really have much of a story. Sure, there are a couple of images with text boxes explaining why protagonist Beatrix LeBeau finds herself on an entirely new location (Rainbow Island), full of all sorts of new slimes to ranch, and even why she no longer has the gear she had accumulated over the course of the previous game. However, that’s about as far as the story goes. After this, the narrative essentially takes a back seat, focusing on making sure that you, as the player, are as comfortable as you can be for the cosy and adorable adventure.

With the barest of narratives you can possibly get, you’re then thrown into the Slime Conservatory, which serves as your new base of operations, and are given a single task: explore the island. Of course, that’s not to say that there isn’t much in the way of gameplay here. Slime Rancher 2 revolves around you running around the island and collecting slimes and resources with your vacuum gun, called the vacpack. Storing the slime requires you to build up special pens, however, and each type of slime has its own different requirements for its survival. Phosphor Slimes, for example, are sensitive to sunlight, and need their pens to have special upgrades that dim the light for them, along with a roof to ensure that they don’t just fly off into the wilds.

“Different kinds of slimes can create varying types of Plorps.”

You also have to keep your slimes fed. To start out with, you’ll head out into the island to scavenge various fruits, vegetables, and even meat in the form of chickens. These can then be shot at your pens to feed your slimes. Now, slimes can’t really die, and there isn’t much in the way of “satisfaction” mechanics that could potentially cause an uprising by agitated slimes in your pens. Rather, you want to feed your slimes as much and as often as you possibly can to ensure the continuous production of an item called a Plorp. Different kinds of slimes can create varying types of Plorps. Pink Slimes, for example, can only create the Pink Plorps, while Phosphor or Cotton Plorps need their own distinct kinds of Slime.

These Plorps can then be sold at a machine for money, with each Plorp having its own distinct value. Pink Plorps, for example, fetch the lowest price, and the price goes up alongside the rarity and exoticness of the Plorp you sell. The money can then be spent on creating new structures, buying blueprints, and even upgrades to your existing ones. Along with new pens and chicken coops to start out with, you can also spend money on building up gardens, which in turn allow you to plant a specific type of fruit or vegetable, which can subsequently be fed to your slimes.

Along with building up your home base, the money you make from selling Plorps is also used as a way to gate off parts of Rainbow Island. Each new part you might want to explore needs a hefty number of coins. In this way, you’re only really encouraged to go into these new areas once you are certain that you can handle the challenges that they might present. These challenges can range from tricky platforming, to even hostile flora and fauna, which includes slimes.

“Generally speaking, Slime Rancher 2 feels the most hectic right as you start out.”

Making money isn’t the only thing Plorps are good for, however. They are also often used as crafting materials for the various upgrades you can make to your own character. These upgrades tend to be quite important, especially in the earlier parts of the game, since they open up the ability for you to extract various resources out in the world. Even smaller upgrades like giving you one more slot for a unique item to carry, or raising the maximum number of slimes you can carry with you in a single stack, tend to feel quite meaningful. However, the price of getting these upgrades often tends to feel quite hopeless, especially since you’ll have your hands full in trying to manage your unruly slimes that love jumping all over the place.

Generally speaking, Slime Rancher 2 feels the most hectic right as you start out. The tutorial is rather free form, and you’re encouraged to just roam around and push buttons to figure out what you should be doing. Once you’ve got a couple of pens with Pink and Cotton Slimes in the beginning, you’ll also very quickly discover hybrid slimes, which in this case comes about from a Pink and Cotton Slime merging together into one massive Pink Slime with bunny ears and the ability to leap incredibly high. These larger slimes tend to provide a great combination of Plorps to sell when they’re fed, which means that you’ll be tempted to build a special pen for them. However, because they can jump quite high, you’ll also want to save up for high walls to make sure that they’re not just running amok in your base.

These low-stakes problems that need the player to constantly explore and experiment with various gameplay mechanics and upgrades end up forming the foundations that make Slime Rancher 2 tick. You are not going to be getting into epic fights with huge bosses in this game. Rather, you’re going to spend your time relaxing, looking at the adorably goofy slimes bouncing around your various pens, and exploring when you think you really need to, all the time fixing smaller problems that might pop up here and there.

“Of course, the generally-relaxing vibe is also helped a great deal by the excellent visuals and audio.”

For players that might be looking for more of a challenge, however, Slime Rancher 2 does offer up some unique puzzle solving and navigational challenges that need you to not only explore the world to find them, but to also be familiar with the properties of the different kinds of slimes in the surrounding area. These challenges tend to be another great way to collect Plorps, rare slimes, and even some blueprints for upgrades or new structures.

Of course, the generally-relaxing vibe is also helped a great deal by the excellent visuals and audio. As its name might imply, Rainbow Island is an incredibly colourful location, and each type of slime feels quite distinct thanks not only to their colours or other features, but also smaller touches, like their facial expressions. The soundtrack is basically composed of nothing but relaxing music coupled with ambient sounds like the rains. Sound design is generally pretty great too; each slime can be distinguished thanks to the kinds of sounds they make, and even your vacpack has a satisfying “thunk” when you shoot a slime out from your inventory and into the pen.

On the performance side of things, Slime Rancher 2 ran quite well, offering a smooth frame rate of between 120 and 140 on my PC—an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU. It is worth noting that you might face some initial hitches early on, likely due to the game loading in all the assets it needs, but these issues get ironed out over the first couple of minutes of your play time.

“It ultimately still ends up feeling like a great, relaxing and whimsical way to spend a few hours.”

Slime Rancher 2 feels like an excellent follow-up to its predecessor in all the right ways. Not only does it provide plenty of hours worth of relaxing exploration-centric gameplay, there are also plenty of new things to discover, like new kinds of slimes, and how they can interact with each other. While the gameplay might feel a bit more hectic when you first start out, it ultimately still ends up feeling like a great, relaxing and whimsical way to spend a few hours.

This game was reviewed on PC.