With its latest update, May’s Add to Cart Prontomart, Slime Rancher 2 is continuing on the path through Early Access to full release. Thus far, the team at Monomi Park is pleased with Slime Rancher 2's early access performance so far, and the studio recently talked about this part of its journey in an interview with Game ZXC.

In the Slime Rancher series, players step into the shoes of Beatrix LeBeau, who gathers wiggly slime creatures to bring to various enclosures. These slimes, if well-tended, eat food to produce “plorts” that can be sold for the game’s currency Newbucks or used in slime research. Slime Rancher 2 deepens the cozy rancher experience by adding more personalization to the ranch than the previous installment, as well as a host of new environments, gadgets, and, of course, slimes.

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Things are Good on the Ranch

In a statement to Game ZXC, Monomi Park expressed pride in how the game has developed so far.

We're very happy with it as we've sold over a million units and player reviews are very positive. As we're working towards our 1.0 release, players can expect more of what they've come to love about our game.

Game ZXC also spoke with senior Monomi Park user experience designer Pearl Ko about the recent update and the Early Access overall, and she expressed similar feelings. Ko dove deeper into some of the priorities that Monomi Park has had in making Slime Rancher 2 the success it has been, with 94% positive reviews on Steam at time of writing.

As a UX designer, Ko mentioned the ways Slime Rancher 2’s interface and design has improved over the original Slime Rancher by making things simpler and easier to understand for players, while also adding more of the Slime Rancher flavor to the styling of the UI.

Probably the biggest change has been, at least in terms of the UI side of things, just trying to make things more clear, more minimalist, and making things easier to just kind of grok at a glance. I know that the first game had a pretty light touch in terms of styling of the UI, so this time around, things are a little more curated to the overall vibe of Slime Rancher . Things should feel more cohesive. It should feel a little more like it's part of an overall vision in terms of the artistic style.

Ko is also proud of Slime Rancher 2’s accessibility features, like toggling sprinting and the slime vacuum and keybindings, with an eye being kept on more features further out in the game’s future. There are also specific parts of the 0.5 update–Add to Cart Prontomart–that add a lot to Slime Rancher 2’s appeal for Ko.

What Prontomart Adds to the Cart

For an Early Access update, Add to Cart Prontomart has been well-received by fans. Though the update does make certain other features important in coming updates, on its own it adds a lot to the game as it slowly grows to match the content of the original title. Part and parcel of an Early Access title is growing pains, but the growing pleasure of the 0.5 update has also been noticed by the fan base.

The update largely focused on personalization and customization for the ranch. The titular Prontomart adds the convenience of getting gadgets and toys for the player’s slimes, and also introduces variants of existing gadgets to better suit an individual player’s aesthetic sensibilities.

Some of the new gadgets include a throne for slimes to sit upon or standing fans, and the toys include platform-exclusive toys giving each version of Slime Rancher a clearer identity. This addition was well-timed, as the game released on PlayStation two weeks after the update dropped. In its statement, Monomi Park said that things like this are a priority for the game, as adding more player agency in customization is an important component of Slime Rancher 2. Ko illustrated how this has been a throughline in the game’s updates.

This update is going very hand in hand with the previous update, which is Gadgets My Way … essentially the entire world has been opened up to players being able to place these things everywhere. And so this update is more about helping players get even more and that they can purchase and can craft a variety of things so that they can further decorate and customize their experience.

The update also added a new area for the ranch in the form of an archeological dig site that Ko, an LA native, likened to the famous La Brea Tar Pits. The Digsite gives a slightly tropical vibe while showing trapped fossils and relics of ancient times. The team at Monomi Park thought the Digsite paired well with the update’s focus on new gadgets and personalization, because thematically it links to discovery of new pieces of history through the uncovering of new objects. Players can even get free decorations from the Digsite by being rudimentary archeologists, the team explained.

However, it’s the Digsite that most begs for a future feature in the next major update: Factorio-style automation. In the original Slime Rancher, some tasks could be automated by use of drones to help accommodate the ever-expanding ranch. With the addition of the Digsite, drones are becoming one of the most-requested features from the community. Though Ko pointed out that the way fans push items around can be used to help construct rudimentary assembly lines in the meantime. Additionally, Ko suggests players who haven’t picked up the update look into the new toys added to the game, too. There are many more than simply the platform-exclusives, she explained.

I think the toys definitely are probably a good spend. They're super cute. They're also very tactile. So they're not like a gadget strictly, they're more like an object for slimes. So slimes can interact with them like any other physics objects in the world. And because they are designed for slimes, they can help put slimes in a better mood. You'll see slimes like bouncing around with them, which is really super adorable. So I think that that gets a lot of really fun visual mileage for players.

As the game continues toward its 1.0 version, it remains exceedingly well-received. If it stays on this trajectory, it’ll become far grander than the original Slime Rancher, so Monomi Park seemingly has a lot to be optimistic about.

Slime Rancher 2

Monomi Park's Slime Rancher 2 follows Beatrix LeBeau as she sets up a ranch in a colorful world filled with the eponymous slimes. In order to make money, Beatrix must cultivate and sell the slimes' plorts.