It seems fair to say that there’s been a huge audience lying in wait for Slime Rancher 2. The colourful indie sequel was only released in Early Access yesterday but it’s seeing some big results already. No more than six hours into its release and sales figures for the game have already topped the 100,000 mark. Pretty impressive stuff.
The incredible figure was confirmed by developer Monomi Park’s CEO Nick Popovich on Twitter. Tweeting earlier today, Popovich explains that while he had a rough target of 100,000 sales in the first 24 hours of Slime Rancher 2 in mind, the actual results have vastly exceeded his expectations.
The game, which is a sequel to the sleeper indie hit Slime Rancher, started its Early Access launch just yesterday on PC and on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox Game Pass. The highly engaging casual ranching simulator reprises the successful formula of the original game and also heralds the return of protagonist Beatrix LeBeau. Players will this time be heading to Rainbow Island, where there’s a wealth of weird and wonderful ancient tech to discover. As well, of course, as rounding up and vacuuming those adorable blobs of slime to take back to the ranch.
The lengthy Early Access period will also be useful for the developers to perfect and polish their plans for the game’s full release. Slime Rancher 2 will feature many more slimes than the original title and will also have benefitted from a graphical overhaul in order to meet the powerful capabilities of the current console generation. Alongside new areas of exploration and trinkets to craft and get to grips with, Slime Rancher 2 will also have the potential to grow with its community. As recently shared on a Steam developer update, Monomi Park has a clear vision for the game as being “where the world of Slime Rancher will grow and evolve for years to come.”
The game will be in Early Access for around 18 months, allowing Monomi Park plenty of time to listen and adapt the game to the feedback of its substantial community. However, the online reaction and responses on Steam signal that there’s plenty of customer satisfaction in the community. Slime Rancher 2 has already managed to accumulate an impressive number of “overwhelmingly positive” reviews so far, with over 2,500 responses on Steam as of the time of writing.
With the original Slime Rancher surpassing all expectations to clock up over 7 million downloads and more than 2 million unit sales across PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 to date, it could be that Slime Rancher 2 has some big shoes to fill. However, with such a strong and successful start so far, it seems the sequel could soon overtake its predecessor, as there are clearly plenty of people hungry for some slime-ranching action.
Slime Rancher 2 is available now in Early Access on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store and on Xbox Series X/S. The game is also available on Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming.
