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Slime Rancher 2 will be bigger and even more colourful than the originalGame director Nick Popovich tells us what to expect from the slime-coralling sequel
Game director Nick Popovich tells us what to expect from the slime-coralling sequel
Slime Rancher 2 Announcement TrailerWatch on YouTube
Slime Rancher 2 Announcement Trailer
“One of the reasons we had to move on from the first game is that we were literally, and I meanliterally, reaching the bounds of the world,” Popovich says. “Everything in the original Slime Rancher is basically happening in the same scene to have that seamless movement between zones, and we were coming up to the physical limits of this virtual space.”
For the game’s last few updates, the team had to be strategic about what they added. Unless they completely rebuilt Slime Rancher, they were completely out of room. And so, Slime Rancher 2 was born. Monomi Park have constructed a new world that they can add as much as they want to (as far as they know). It’s a shame the first game ended up being so limiting, but Popovich seems pretty excited at the prospect of moving on. It means he and the team get to work on something entirely new, exciting existing players and hopefully bringing in some new ones too.
“With a sequel, everyone gets to interpret this new art that we’ve made all at once, the conversation happens all at once. There isn’t this distance between veteran players and new players,” he says.
While he can’t give me an exact size, Popovich is reasonably sure that when Slime Rancher 2 launches in early access next year, it will be roughly as big as the first game up through the ruins. It doesn’t sound like this is a case of “bigger is better”, however. Popovich says they’re using the space a little bit differently this time, too.
In the first game, if you built a very large ranch, your many needy slimes would stop you from exploring as much. Popovich says the team are trying to balance that better in the sequel, so that if you want to go off exploring for a few days, you can. Equally if you just want to get stuck in with the slimes in your conservatory, you can do that too.
“In the original Slime Rancher, when you moved into a new zone, we would introduce you to a new slime, a new resource, or something a little deeper,” he says. “Now, we have a bunch of that classic stuff, as well as new stuff, and we have a new way that resources are being distributed to players.”
Similar to the original Slime Rancher, exploring Rainbow Island will require some light puzzle-solving and finding different tools to get you around. From the conservatory, which is essentially your new ranch, you’ll be able to see mountains and areas you can explore - after a little bit of adventuring, of course.
“My favorite thing in games is finding secrets, especially after I’ve thoroughly explored a space over a long period of time, and then discover that one thing that’s been hiding right under my nose. It’s the greatest feeling in the world,” Popovich tells me. “Slime Rancher 2’s world is definitely more interconnected than the original, there’s a lot more stuff like, as you peer over a cliff, you can see there’s a ledge down there, and then there’s a little reward.”
Imagine being this happy all the time.
“Every part of the visuals for Slime Rancher 2 we’ve constructed to make it feel more in line with what we were trying to do with the original,” he says. “We’re like, let’s do pastels, let’s show them something that they’ve never seen before.”
And it certainly shows. Even from just the handful of screenshots and a minute and half-long trailer, it’s clear the devs are aiming for a world that’s even more vibrant than the first. It’s been one of Popovich’s personal missions to make sure his games are as colourful as possible, and he has a pretty unique way of achieving that.
“Something that’s always stuck with me from my old high school painting class is we were required to buy this acrylic paint set that had all the colors of the rainbow on it, including black and white,” he says. “And our painting instructor, as I’m sure a lot of painting instructors have done, said: ‘Great, get out your brushes. Now I want everyone to take their black paints, and walk it over to the garbage can and throw it out.’
Now that I know there are no black pixels, it makes so much sense how the Slime Rancher games manage to look likethis.
Now, this wouldn’t have been a very good Slime Rancher interview if I didn’t ask about the slimes. So, I’m pleased to inform you that if you breed the bat slimes with other types of slimes, they’ll end with teeny tiny bat wings. That’s about all I got on that front though; the devs don’t want to spoil too much about the new little round friends we’ll get to meet.
“We think resources are well spent if there’s a good joke,” Popovich tells me. “Like the chicken cloner from the first game. And so there is… one slime that does something that I cannot wait for people to see. It’s my current favorite slime, but I can’t talk about it.”
My new best friend.
As a fan of the first game, I’m looking forward to seeing what Monomi Park have in store for the second. More of the samebut biggersounds great to me - don’t fix what isn’t broken, right? But I’m curious, given the success of Slime Rancher (which had soldover three million copiesas of last year), what sort of pressure are the team feeling now the sequel has been announced?
“It’s hard to talk about this without seeming like we’re bragging, but we have like a 90% positive review score on Steam, and you look at that you’re like, no way you can do that again. How do you do that again? But we’re definitely going to try,” Popovich tells me.
“Slime Rancher players still rack up millions of hours of game time per month, so that’s a clear signal to us that they want to keep playing that right now. The sequel will naturally expand the world in a way that isn’t going to upset how you’ve been playing the game previously,” he adds. “We’re hoping that using that approach, everyone’s going to be cool with it. But you never know.”
Slime Rancher 2 will launch in early access next yearon Steam,the Epic Game Store,Xbox Game Pass For PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
