Slime Rancher Leaving Early Access On August 1st
Slime Rancher, the incredibly popular slime-farming simulator, is leaving Steam Early Access after a year and a half. Starting August 1st, Slime Rancher will launch as a full game, with Version 1.0.0. That update will “tie a few loose ends”. However, there’s a lot more waiting down the pipeline, such as the Map System, Iron Rancher Mode (Hard Mode), Casual Mode, and more.
Slime Rancher is proof that any concept can be made amazing with love and effort. It’s a game in which you explore an alien planet and farm the local fauna, called Slimes. There’s many different species, each of them behaving differently and requiring different farming methods to thrive. It’s a ridiculous concept, especially because you use a vacuum gun to catch and shoot Slimes into corrals. As silly as it is, it’s a ton of fun, and it has a devout following.
The game has been in early access for about a year and a half, and it’s finally ready to launch as a full game. According to a post on the Slime Rancher Steam page, the full version will come out on August 1st, 2017. It will also receive update 1.0.0, which, according to the post, will fix some “loose ends”. So, the game itself won’t change that much then. However, the post goes on to detail a couple more features that the developers Monomi Park have planned.
First on the list of upcoming features is the Map System. This should help farmers make their way through the Far, Far Range. However, it won’t be super-detailed, since the developers maintain that “exploring the unknown and learning the world is important to the experience.” It will help you get a general felling of where you are in relation to everything else, though. The Devs are already working on the map system, and it should launch in the near feature.
The second major additions coming down the pipeline are Casual Mode and Iron Rancher Mode. Casual Mode is pretty self-explanatory. You can play as you please, without having to worry about tarr (corrupted Slimes that can infect your own). Iron Rancher, on the other hand:
An exciting new game mode that adds a replay-able, survival-like experience to Slime Rancher! Aimed at veteran ranchers who have cleared Adventure Mode and seek an increased challenge, the Iron Rancher Competition has you racing against the clock to collect quotas of various plorts across multi-day rounds. However, each round offers unique challenges and remixed rules that greatly changes the standard Slime Rancher experience
They mention two more features in the post: Desert Slime toys and Rancher Missions. All in all, ranchers have a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks. August 1st isn’t that far away.
