Slime Rancher 2 – Cute chaos in the marketplace of goo.
As a surprise, Monomi Park’s Slime Rancher, a strange first-person life simulator that sold over 17 million copies and made a name for itself in the cozy gaming scene, came out in 2017. It had a strange yet appealing hook: it was a mix of farming, exploration, and taming cute goo blobs that turned into valuable resources called Plorts.
It was like a mix of Pokémon and Harvest Moon, but with a strange twist: you were running a ranch based on selling Slime to people in other galaxies. Now, Monomi Park is back with Slime Rancher 2, which was released in Early Access in 2022 and is now set to launch on 1.0. Beatrix LeBeau, the beloved rancher from the first game, is back to build a new house on Rainbow Island.
This sequel stays true to what made the first one so popular: cute slimes, a colorful world to explore, and a growing and selling loop that is way too addicting to stop. It also adds new places, new types of Slime, a more flexible base, and features that make the late game more fun.
The story has never been the most important part of the series, and Slime Rancher 2 is no different. There is no bad guy planning to take down your goo-based kingdom, and there is no big quest that moves you forward. Instead, the story is told through a collection of logs, hints about the environment, and small secrets that are hidden in Rainbow Island’s scenery.
The atmosphere is more important than the framework, and players are encouraged to piece together their own story while planning their journey. Some players might think that the lack of a strong story is a weakness. However, what truly makes Slime Rancher 2 enjoyable is setting your own goals. Some farmers will spend all their time trying to get the most out of their crops, turning their conservatories into factories that produce slime.
Others will focus on how it looks, putting together corrals and decorations to make little dioramas that are just right. Still others will spend their time looking for rare slimes and each and every secret hidden in the map’s corners. That you can make the story fit whatever obsession you choose is part of the game’s ongoing appeal.
Slime Rancher 2 is based on the fun of repeating tasks in a strangely relaxing way. You go out into the world, bring slimes back to your ranch with you in your vacuum backpack, and feed them fruit, veggies, or sometimes a live chicken. In exchange, they give you plorts, which can be used as currency or to craft items. At the market, you can sell these plorts for Newbucks, or you can feed them to the refinery to make toys, upgrades, and decorations.
It may sound easy, but the circle has a strong pull. Feeding, collecting, and selling is a satisfying cycle that can go on for hours without being noticed. Automation makes things easier. Auto-feeders and collectors lighten the load, and soon, drones will take over some of the more boring jobs. For some reason, Monomi Park leaves some steps manual, as if to remind you that the grind is part of the fun.
This cycle is broken up by exploration, which makes the game interesting. Rainbow Island is divided into distinct biomes, each with its unique theme. Each biome has its own slimes, food sources, and natural materials. To get into new areas, you have to solve small tasks, find keys, or feed the giant gordo slimes too much until they burst, which makes new paths available.
As you go back to get resources, find hidden areas, and get sidetracked by other goals, what starts out as an easy detour often turns into a long adventure. That steady distraction is built into the game. A single goal can turn into a journey that lasts for hours, and it’s easy to get lost in the rhythm of finding.
Slime Rancher 2‘s puzzles are easy and have more to do with managing resources than with reasoning. Some doors can’t be opened without a certain piece of equipment, Gordos need a lot of food, and gadgets that you can only make later in the game are often needed to find secret treasures. These puzzles make it fun to try new things and demonstrate the importance of paying close attention to one’s surroundings and diet.
In the meantime, there isn’t much fighting going on—unless you count the chaos that the Tar slimes cause. These twisted monsters are made when a Largo eats a third plort. A Largo is a Slime that has been created by combining two types of Plorts. The result is a hungry animal that eats everything it sees, even the slimes you worked hard to grow.
If you don’t take action, tars can destroy entire corrals, turning your once-nice ranch into a disaster zone. Good news: you can fight them back with water or turn them off completely in the game’s settings. One of the smartest things Monomi Park has done is make this choice. Players who want a more challenging and tense experience can keep Tars active, while players who just want to relax can turn them off.
Slime Rancher 2 doesn’t use a standard experience system. Instead, progress is based on crafting, upgrades, and plots. You can buy changes and grow your ranch by selling pastures. By feeding rarer slimes and collecting resources, you can use the Fabricator to make tools, which are essential for progressing in the late game. This is how you get tools like teleporters, jetpacks, and drones that help you farm and explore more quickly.
There is more method to the grind when you have limited inventory. Because your vacpack is small, you have to choose what to bring and what to leave behind all the time. This can be annoying, but it’s also what makes people want “just one more trip.” As you discover more, you can increase your abilities, giving you a satisfying sense of growth that matches the growth of your ranch.
It’s beautiful to look at Slime Rancher 2. Rainbow Island is full of bright colors, plants that glow, and strange scenery. From fiery lava zones to calm beaches, each area feels different, and the dynamic weather system does more than just look nice. For instance, magical thunderstorms can drop rare resources, which makes the world feel living and interactive.
Without a doubt, the slimes are the stars of the show. Each one has its own personality, which makes it feel like more than just a tool. You can hop like a rabbit with Cotton Slimes, float like a butterfly with Flutter Slimes, and get hit by dangerous spikes from Rock Slimes. It’s still fun to find a new type of Slime, even after dozens of hours, because their patterns are both cute and naughty.
Optimization is still not very good at it. There are drops in frame rate, stuttering, and a broken HUD that can’t be resized, indicating that this game was in Early Access. These problems can be seen, but not often enough to take away from the beauty of the images.
Adding to the cozy feel is the sound design. It starts out slow and melodic while you’re exploring, but as you work in the field, the music gets faster and more upbeat. It’s never annoying and instead creates a relaxing background that fits the game’s mood.
Rain, bubbling lava, and the soft rustling of grass are some of the sounds that add to the realism. The slimes themselves make noises that give them a sense of life, such as squeaks, pops, and chirps. Hearing a pen full of slimes all drop plorts at once can get old after a while, but the sounds add to the game’s personality more often than they take away from it.
The best thing about Slime Rancher 2 is that it doesn’t try to be something new. It builds on the first game’s addictive loop of exploring, farming, and battling Slime by adding a bigger world, more ways to customize it, and well-thought-out late-game features. This follow-up is dangerously easy to get lost in for hours if you like the relaxing flow of farming sims.
That doesn’t mean the game is perfect, though. Problems with optimization, a limited story, a loop that repeats itself occasionally, and a HUD that requires improvement all remind you that it was released in Early Access. Still, the strengths far outweigh these weaknesses. Rainbow Island’s beauty, the huge number of slimes, the satisfaction of making a conservatory that grows plants, the freedom to decorate and improve, and the thrill of finding all come together to make an experience that is both cozy and interesting.
Slime Rancher 2 is silly, strange, and always fun, even though it has some rough spots. It’s a game that knows its players want to get lost in small jobs, hunt for the next type of Slime, decorate one more corral, or go a little further into the unknown. You can do more than just farm slimes. It’s fun to find order in chaos and maybe make a lot of money in the process.
