its like cocaine without all the bad parts and also it is nothing like cocaine and just has slimes that make me happy
— A Steam review
Slime Rancher 2 is the sequel to Slime Rancher, again developed by Monomi Park. It entered early access on the 22nd of September 2022, and is available on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and Xbox Series X|S.
A while after the events of the first game, Beatrix Lebeau receives a letter from an unknown sender telling her about Rainbow Island. She sets sail there, and discovers that it already has a slime conservatory waiting for her.
The game introduces several new kinds of slimes. Item Crafting is now available from the start, and Bea can harvest materials used for inventions directly from the overworld without having to build extractors first. Gordos now block your access to portals instead of holding keys.
This game contains examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor World: The grass on Rainbow Island comes in every colour of the rainbow; in Rainbow Fields, it appears iridescent.
- Animal Motifs: All the new slimes are based on animals. Cotton slimes are rabbits; angler slimes are anglerfish; batty slimes are bats; ringtail slimes are raccoons and tanukis; and flutter slimes are butterflies. The yolky slime isn't based on a whole animal, but rather a fried chicken's egg.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Chickens will continue to breed no matter how many are in a coop, making it easier to feed carnivorous slimes.
- You can now upgrade your vacpack to have extra tanks, which makes carrying around a lot of foods, plorts, or materials at once less tedious.
- Another vacpack upgrade makes it so when you're knocked out, you don't lose the entire contents of your vacpack and get to keep at least one unit of each item.
- You now have the option to sleep until the next night as well as for a flat six hours instead of just until 6am the next morning, allowing you to skip to a convenient time easier.
- Gordos now all require 30 food to pop (with favorites still counting as two) instead of 50.
- Art Evolution: The user interface now uses flat pastel colours and a thicker, rounded font (in stark contrast to the original's black Open Sans on white backgrounds), and the Slimepedia's artwork has less lighting and shading.
- Bag of Spilling: Beatrix brings no items and only 250 Newbucks with her to Rainbow Island.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: There are flowers all over the islands that glow at night, and the aptly-named Angler Slimes have glowing orbs like anglerfish.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The game does away with emails, effectively removing Casey from the story.
- Contrasting Sequel Setting: The first game's ranch was located in the Dry Reef, a desert dominated by yellow and orange hues. This game's ranch is a glass-dome conservatory in the predominantly blue and green Rainbow Fields. More broadly, while the first game's world mainly consisted of barren, rocky areas (even the Moss Blanket used to be barren, according to Hobson's messages), Rainbow Island is more lush and covered in grass.
- Excuse Plot: Beatrice is called to Rainbow Island by a mysterious letter on a boat. The actual story is still in the background, like the first game.
- Expansion Pack World: This game adds Rainbow Island to the Far, Far Range.
- Hard Light: Powderfall Bluffs is full of plants made of auroras. At night, aurora paths appear around the mountains that are solid enough to walk on.
- Item Crafting: Slime Science has changed the most of all the mechanics from the first game. It's now available from the start. Instead of building extractors, you can now gather resources directly from nodes. Instead of buying blueprints, you can find them in treasure pods or receive them from NPCs, but all gadgets cost money to build.
- Lost World: Powderfall Bluffs split off from the mainland a long time ago, and was frozen under the Slime Sea like a living snowglobe until it resurfaced due to volcanic activity in Ember Valley. As a result, it contains creatures thought to be long-extinct, such as saber slimes.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Sea Hens are chicken-shaped seagulls.
- Non-Indicative Name: Rainbow Island is an archipelago.
- Oxymoronic Being: The Slimepedia calls the pomegranite a "living paradox" because it's a plant that only grows in darkness. Despite this, they can be found outside in the green section of Ember Valley.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Powderfall Bluffs was frozen in ice for a long, long time, so it's covered in snow, glaciers, and solid auroras. However, there's also a volcanic area with palm trees. It's also the only place in the game where it snows.
- Story Breadcrumbs: There are drones all over the islands which relay messages from a previous explorer's travels.
- Terrestrial Sea Life: The Angler Slimes used to live deep in the Slime Sea, but their Slimepedia entry speculates that they came to the surface to eat Sea Hens. Anglers are usually found in coastal areas where sponges and corals grow on land.
- Thematic Sequel Logo Change: The "2" in the logo is multicoloured, referencing the setting of Rainbow Island.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Returning Slimes maintain their previous favorites, and the only new Slimes thus far to avert this trope are Ringtail Slimesnote and Yolky Slimesnote . As before, feeding Slimes their favorite food will double their plort production.
- Cotton Slimes: Water Lettuce
- Angler Slimes: Sea Hens, to the point where the Slimepedia claims they evolved to walk on land just to eat them.
- Batty Slimes: Pomegranites
- Flutter Slimes: Moondew Nectar; unlike the others, this is the only thing they'll eat.
- Saber Slimesnote : Thundercluck Hens
- Weird Weather: As well as regular weather conditions such as rain and snow, Rainbow Island rarely experiences slimefall, where slimes fall from the sky en masse.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Your previous ranch is seemingly abandoned after Beatrix travels to Rainbow Island.
