Slime Rancher was an unexpected indie hit to come out of 2016. While it fully released in 2017, it entered Early Access the year prior, where many gamers took the opportunity to harvest some slime poop in a quirky take on the regular farming sim. Though it didn't become quite as popular as Stardew Valley, it's still highly recommended in the genre's community.
While collecting the droppings of slimes, called plorts, is one of the main tasks of the game—players must feed slimes their required diet such as meat or fruits and the slime will produce a plort, which can be sold for varying amounts of money—as it leads to upgrading the ranch and Beatrix's equipment, another major aspect is Slime Rancher's exploration. New areas of the map will open up, sometimes even requiring keys to unlock. But the layout can be difficult to navigate, made worse by the interactive map. But with Slime Rancher 2 due out next year, developer Monomi Park can make some adjustments that would greatly aid players.
Slime Rancher's Map and Teleporters
After being released to the public via Early Access, several new areas were added to Slime Rancher's map, such as The Glass Desert, which was added during Update 0.6, and other sections saw major design overhauls, such as The Moss Blanket. More locations were added after the game's full release. Possibly as a result of these updates, Slime Rancher's map somewhat feels like these areas were tacked onto one another. While the ranch serves as a sort of center point, the areas explored in the Far, Far Range branch off of one another, meaning players must trek through each section to get to the map's farthest reaches. Additionally, finding the connections between each area or points of interest within them can be difficult in locations with many areas, like The Moss Blanket.
The teleporters that allow for easier travel between sections of the Far, Far Range are quite peculiar. While there are a few sprinkled throughout the game, the teleporters are mostly one-way trips, unlike Stardew Valley's minecarts, which offer two-way travel between some parts of Pelican Town. They're hidden within each area and can be difficult to locate. Furthermore, only some of these teleporters are marked on Slime Rancher's map, and only once the area has been fully revealed by finding the required unlockable in the wild. Luckily, players can craft their own teleporters, but they don't get this opportunity until late-game.
And unlike some games like Breath of the Wild where players can drop markers at will, Slime Rancher doesn't provide this option, but it would benefit from this feature greatly. Overall, Slime Rancher's map is barren when it comes to marked locations. Exploration is a big part of Slime Rancher because players need to venture and hunt for resources very often. It would be useful if the map marked—or if players were able to mark—where certain resources can be found with correlating map stickers like stony hens, mint mangoes, or honey slimes. This way, players can find specific and rare resources more easily, like scavenging for materials in Fallout 4.
Two other common UI elements found in gaming that would greatly complement this feature, and therefore aid with player exploration, would be an overhead compass often found in open-world RPGs like Skyrim and a minimap at the bottom of the screen. As previously mentioned, layers of land can grow confusing and are easy to get lost in, but having a compass and/or minimap would help the player's sense of direction.
It's currently unclear what Slime Rancher 2's map will look like such as if it will be bigger. But if so, there should be some adjustments made that will ease the difficulties of travel.
Slime Rancher 2 is set to be released in 2022 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.