'With a sequel, everyone gets to interpret this new art that we've made all at once, the conversation happens all at once.

It means he and the team get to work on something entirely new, exciting existing players and hopefully bringing in some new ones too. It's a shame the first game ended up being so limiting, but Popovich seems pretty excited at the prospect of moving on. Monomi Park have constructed a new world that they can add as much as they want to (as far as they know). Unless they completely rebuilt Slime Rancher, they were completely out of room. 'Everything in the original Slime Rancher is basically happening in the same scene to have that seamless movement between zones, and we were coming up to the physical limits of this virtual space.'įor the game's last few updates, the team had to be strategic about what they added. 'One of the reasons we had to move on from the first game is that we were literally, and I mean literally, reaching the bounds of the world,' Popovich says. But like, a whole lot more, because the world will be much larger and more dense than what you're used to. So, for fans of the original Slime Rancher, good news! The sequel will effectively be more of the same. Popovich starts by telling me that, for Slime Rancher 2, the studio have completely rebuilt everything from the ground up. We talked about the game's art direction, the pressure of making a follow-up to a much-loved indie, and how the sequel has the potential to be a hell of a lot bigger than the original.

Naturally, I needed to find out more about these good squishy orbs, so I caught up with Nick Popovich, Slime Rancher game director and CEO of developer Monomi Park. The sequel to the slime-corralling sim is set to release in early access next year, and it'll feature a vibrant new world to explore, and some excellent bat slimes. I'm always up for being pleasantly surprised by adorable slimes. Slime Rancher 2 was a bit of an unexpected announcement this E3, albeit a very welcome one.

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