Preview: Slime Rancher 2 Seems as Slimy as Ever

Slime Rancher 2 is one of those games that’s been in early access for quite some time! That started back in September 2022, and we’re gradually seeing Monomi Park add new slimes, regions, and elements to Rainbow Island. Now that the 0.6.0 patch dropped back in December 2024, we figured it’s a good time to head back into the successor to the multiplatform indie to see how it is coming along. While some parts are still a bit fiddly, it seems like the team is making strong strides to offer more of what people loved so much about the first game.

Beatrix LeBeau is great a slime ranching. She’s so good that she’s sort of famous? At least, someone noticed, because a mysterious letter invited her to the Rainbow Islands. It’s a haven filled with more types of slimes and all sorts of ruins. Since the nature of slime ranching does offer a lot of freedom, she doesn’t question who might be contacting her, hops in a boat that showed up, and heads out to continue a colorful, capitalistic adventure involving the plorp slime droppings. 

The core gameplay in Slime Rancher 2 remains unchanged, which is good since the controls and concept are great to begin with. This is a first-person collecting experience. Your home base consists of a number of potential pens for slimes. If you have money, you can build and upgrade those, adding elements to keep slimes in and comfortable like higher walls, nets, auto-feeders, and auto-plorp-collectors. Likewise, you can outfit Beatrice with equipment that makes her more adept, if you can afford it. Your goal is to explore areas, with some locked away either by necessary progression elements or not being included in the early access build yet. These can include little bugs with recordings that offer more insight, or features that unlock more of your map. As you get to new places, additional types of slimes appear, meaning more profit due to their plorps. Especially if you feed one type of slime another type of plorp, turning it into a hybrid Largo that drops two plorps from each type to increase your potential profits.

The general theme here seems to be “more.” Even in early access, I’m constantly seeing new types of slimes, new opportunities to explore bigger areas, and elements I want to interact with. When you first head into the wilds, you’ll almost immediately happen upon the new Cotton Slime that looks like a rabbit. If you beat the Cotton Gordo variety, you can reach an area with the Flutter Slimes that look like butterflies. I especially like how some feel a bit more challenging to get, like the Ringtail Slime that I found I could really only get during the day if I was lucky enough to find one frozen like a tanuki statue. I did get a chance to peek at the new labyrinth in 0.6.0, and I appreciate how there are more puzzle elements to Slime Rancher 2 that really make it feel like you’re exploring runes, overcoming challenges, and earning your right to see variants like the Siamese or Sleepy Slime. 

I honestly didn’t experience any technical issues. If anything, the two things that really are “telling” are the early execution and the fact that content is definitely isn’t there yet due to gradual rollouts. In the case of the former, Slime Rancher 2 right now feels like a game that could be difficult to really “start” unless you already played the original game. There is a very hands-off approach to getting started. If you didn’t already know how to get pens set up and upgraded, start building up Beatrice’s equipment, and getting into the gameplay loop of catching slimes, bringing them “home,” feeding them, selling the plorps, and reinvesting the money to do a better job of earning more money, someone just starting might be left flailing. I was shocked when it didn’t even introduce the map in any way until I’d reached the first marker unlocking more of it. I really feel like the 1.0 release needs to make it more approachable for newcomers.

The other part is that you will reach a wall at some points, in terms of story and places to go, due to the fact that more places are gradually appearing. It’s natural, in early access! It just means you play Slime Rancher for probably a few weeks, maybe a month, after each major update, then step back until another update arrives. It sort of seems like we’re maybe getting two or three “major updates” per year, based on how 2023 and 2024 went. Since it’s only in 0.6.0 at the moment, I personally suspect it’ll be a 2026 release. So we’re in a good place now for reminders every few months. Given that this is such a relaxed experience, I think it suits it.

I always considered Slime Rancher one of the more relaxed simulations, and I feel like Slime Rancher 2 is going to offer similar situations. We take our times acquiring slimes. We investigate when we feel like it, able to return when updates appear, marathon everything or gradually take it in over longer periods of time. The current build does feel slightly unfriendly to those totally new to the experience, but I’m not concerned and think that could be rectified. What is here, now, does offer more of what those of us who did play the first game know we liked so we can enjoy slime time.

Slime Rancher 2 is in early access on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. 

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