A few years ago the incremental games became fashionable, games in which all the gameplay and reward is based on flooding the player with rewards for the simple fact of continuing to play. Cookie Clicker, the father of the genre, proposed to the playe
r to run his own cookie business whose main method of obtaining it was the simple click. Thus, for each click the player obtained a cookie, later being able to buy grannies that increased the progression to after a
few days become a true titan of the industry. Even playing was not necessary for our “company” to grow up in a world where actions never fall. Slime Rancher takes inspiration from this genre but decides to bring a touch of affection, refinement and originality that results in a very special title.
The game proposes to take care of our own garden of slimes. These gelatinous beings will provide plorps, intergalactic currency commonly used among other gelatin gardeners. Obtaining these gelatin droppings is the central axis on which the playable experience revolveswhich has two central components. The first and least significant is to expl
ore the playable world to get gelatins. The world of Slime Rancher presents a great variety of ecosystems that we will have to learn to cross if we want to accumulate gelatins for our farm. The second, which will occupy most of our time, is the farm itself. Much of our days will consist of feeding our gelatins with their corresponding livelihoods, collecting them when leaving
the gelatins and collecting our reward for them. We will use this reward to improve our farm with new and brand new buildings. What at first sight may seem an excessively simple game is tremendously addictive for its execution.
Action on the farm
Slime Rancher is, for playable purposes, a first-person shooter . Our beloved protagonist comes equipped with a weapon that recalls a mix between the famous portal weapon and the Ghostbusters vacuum cleaner. With the left mouse button we can absorb any playable element and with the right button we can shoot it. Thus, we will use these two simple actions to absorb or sh
oot allied or enemy gelatins, foods and even rubber ducks or disco balls (more on that later). Fortunately, the game has a precision both at the time of m
oving and pointing that makes it extremely satisfying to perform any action. Run through the stage, absorb a gelatin, shoot it towards the distant horizon and see it disappear in the infinite …all this leaves you smiling when you see the clear effort that has been put into creating a world where every sensation is pleasant .
The world that lurks on the outskirts of our peaceful farm is an amalgamation of gelatinous ecosystems and disparate scenarios that we will not tire of going through during the fifteen to twenty hours the game lasts. Every time we go out to explore we will co
me across an authentic jungle where the strongest survive. Gelatins eat each other and are capable of evolving if they consume the p
lorps of a different gelatin, combining their properties . Of course all this information will be useful when it comes to meeting the needs of our farm but in the meantime we will use it to explore the hostile territory of jellies and kidnap as many as necessary to buy better pens on our farm in the near future.
The exploration gameplay remains entertaining thanks in large part to a huge variety of gelatins. From the simplest, pink, to gelatin cat, radioactive, rocky, golden, hot, sweet … we will not be missing types of jellies that collectand eventuall
y squeeze in search of plorps. As we play we will also get keys based on feeding especially fat gelatins until they explode. Yes, the world of Slime Ranc
her is curious. These keys will allow us to access new areas, reminding us in the process of the games of certain interstellar bounty hunters (will the worlds of Metroid and Slime Ranche
r be connected?). Add a series of improvements that include a jetpack, numerous treasures hidden by all scenarios and the level design of Slime Rancher remember, as its gameplay, more a game of shots of the nineties than the clickers we discussed.
Once we collect enough jellies
, it is time to make sure of their safety and good nutrition, because there is nothing more valuable than their precious plorps. Each gelatin has a favorite food that makes it produce twice as much as a unique behavior that makes them usually unbearable.
By joining several gelatins in a cage conspire between them as if a gang jailer were trying to get out of the cage, forming formidable
sometimes gelatinous pyramids that often result in more dead hens than you would like. Given its fugitive tendency it is convenient to apoquinar and buy soon the improvements of the cages that help the containment of the gelatinous collective.
Gelatinous economy
The feeding of our jellies also has a leading role and two main faces. As in our own ecosystems there are herbivorous, carnivorous, fruit
ful and omnivorous gelatins (the pink gelatin gluttons that we first found). As a general rule, the more difficult they are to feed, the more valuable their plorps will be . So, those jellies that enjoy the same as a carrot that a succulent chicken thigh will
take more to enrich us than gourmet gelatin. To help us keep our cattle well fed we have chicken pens and fields for crops. Each cell of o
ur farm can be a gelatin cage, a pen or a field depending on the preference of the player. Some aggressive oil gelatins that appear at dusk make it advisable to buy scarecrows in each cell regardless of our style, of course.
All this will help to improve our farm, buying the surrounding territories and participating in an interstellar improvement program that will allow us to unlock many improvements for our farm from different colors to better expansions. Special me
ntion for jelly toys without which we would not know how adorable a group of rock gelatins is playing with a disco ball.
As advice to the reader it is convenient to first unblock the Laboratory, whose exorbitant price chooses a system of alternative improvements that requires specific resources, but usually gives tremendous advantages.
Accompanying the nice gameplay comes an excellent soundtrack that does nothing but ease the trance that the rest of the game induces.
A sweet instrumentation without vowels takes us to that peaceful place where one lives while playing Slime Rancher. The adorable little cries of jellies, the delicious sucking sound of the weapon we brandished or the delicious pop when we shoot a jelly towards an uncertain future help to attack that place in our brain that makes us feel at ease.
