Slime Rancher 41/43 Achievements (95%)

2017 Backlog Kill #1

I was extremely excited to play this game again. The original two developers of this game had worked on one of my favorite MMOs of all time - Spiral Knights. They left the SK team as the game was starting to take a turn for the worst and as management from SEGA was too much to bear. I was ecstatic when I heard they were working on a new project - Slime Rancher. Before this game was released early-access on Steam, I played in the pre-alpha invite from the devs back in December 2015 and haven't touched it since - until about a week ago. It is absolutely amazing! Although it is an early access game, everything from the controls to the gameplay to the artwork feel significantly polished. It could come out of early access right now and I would consider it a complete game. The soundtrack gives each biome a unique ambience that doesn't get old, and the slimes are just as adorable in-game as they are in the pictures (not everything is adorable though, the tarrs can be quite frightening). Though comprised of two basic actions - vaccing (sucking up just about anything in the game) and shooting - the gameplay and controls don't get old and you get drawn into the game quickly. I'm one of those people who will install a game, play for 15 minutes, lose interest, and stop (shoutout to the ADHD fam) - this game held my attention for a full 22 hours and I couldn't bother playing anything else within the past week or so - I can attest to its addictiveness.

This game also has the right balance of hard-to-attain achievements v. easy-to-attain achievements. It took me ~20 hours to get 41/43 achievements (out of the last two, one is impossible to attain as of right now because the area hasn't been implemented into the game yet, and the other is just insanely rare to get) and about 40% of those can be achieved through just "completing" a basic run-through of the main aspects of the game, whereas another 30% of those are medium-difficulty with the final 30% being tough (yet manageable) to achieve. The game allows you to play in two modes: adventure and 5-day rush. Adventure allows freedom to explore, and this is what I used to create my main ranch. The goal of 5-day rush mode is to gain as much $$$ as you can - some of the most difficult achievements come from this mode. I failed miserably my first time around in 5-day rush mode but managed to redeem myself the second time around (I didn't realize the price of the plorts were constant in this mode unlike in adventure where they rise and fall like in a stock market).

I do feel like the game could still be improved (despite how far it has come!) There's a mailing system where other virtual AI Slime Ranchers can send you messages but I haven't found that they impact my slime ranching life at all and the detail doesn't really add anything; it would be interesting to see what the devs could do with that - I would love more interaction with the AI Slime Ranching community just like how Stardew Valley has the town community. The thought of a Slime Ranching community, of course, leads to the discussion of multiplayer mode. As of right now, Slime Rancher is only a single player game. I recognize that the devs have publicly stated (on the Steam Discussion Boards) that a multiplayer mode is currently not in the works nor is it being planned for the future as of right now, I do wish there could be some form of multiplayer whether it be local co-op or online. However, I would like to stress that the biggest plus to this game is its team of small but remarkably dedicated devs. To me, the amount and quality of the patches and updates that appear are phenomenal. A lot of early-access games these days are just left...to be in early-access forever. So far, I feel like this isn't the case with Slime Rancher. With each patch, more and more of my minor complaints are fixed - and some of these complaints I hardly recognized myself until I read the patch notes and thought, "huh, yeah, that was annoying - but now it's fixed!"