Slime-San: Jump, Stick and Slide to Freedom
Company: Fabraz
Slime-San is a puzzle platformer that is sure to test both your finger dexterity and planning skills. You play as a small green blob, Slime-San, who is gobbled up by a giant roaming snake. Your goal is to make your way through the massive serpent in the hopes of getting your freedom once again. As soon as you start Slime-San, you are greeted with a distinctly retro graphics style. Not only is the world filled with pixely sprites, but the low color palate brings back memories of monochrome monitors. Of course, Slime-San doesn't actually restrict itself to a single color, but there aren't a lot of different shades at the game's disposal and it uses those few different colors to good purpose. Besides some coloring for the various characters you will meet, the colors green and red will be used prominently to either denote danger or an object Slime-San can morph through. More subtle shades of these colors can be found as well, but they all work together to make the retro-feel even stronger.
Slime-San will put you in control of a ball of goop, and as such, you will have a certain set of abilities. You can jump, dash, slowly slide down walls and even morph and go through specific parts of the snake's odd anatomy. With the clever application of these moves, as well as finding just the right way of combining them, you will work your way through a large series of puzzle rooms, each one with a considerably harder layout than before. It isn't long before the game introduces obstacles that cause instant death when touched, blocks that need to be moved or even destroyed, and to top it off, each room has a time limit before the chamber starts flooding with stomach acid, putting a time crunch on each puzzle the game throws at you. From what we played, we found the game starts off nice and easy so that you can effectively learn the basic moves that slimes are capable of, but the game looks to ramp up quickly and your fingers will be put to the test in order to slowly progress through the long snake to each new puzzle and section of the serpent's body.
Interestingly, Slime-San isn't just about the puzzles. Your character isn't alone in his journey through the snake's system. While he will have a small bird as a constant companion, he will also find an entire town of animals living in the snake's belly. This odd town adds some much needed breaks between the seemingly endless series of puzzles. In this area, you will be able to do everything from buy outfits for either Slime-San or his bird companion, unlock different slimes (each with different skills and stats), train, buy a variety of objects, and even play a few arcade games. Of course, all of the currency used to unlock many of these features is obtained by playing through the twisted puzzles in the game, and those pickups are generally hard to get.
Based on what we've seen so far, if there is one thing Slime-San has in abundance, it's content. With over 100 levels, and each level consisting of several puzzle rooms, this game looks like it will provide players with an amazing amount of gameplay time. On top of that, players will be able to unlock extra Modes like New Game+, Speed Run and Boss Rush, and given the amount of finger-dexterity needed to get through many of these levels without any extra incentive, I can only imagine how much more challenging these other gameplay modes will offer up to players able to tackle these options. Slime-San will be released on Steam for the PC and Mac in early April, but the developers at Fabaz have already announced that Xbox One and PS4 releases won't be far behind. If you are looking for some twitch-based gameplay that is sure to provide a ton of content, then this is a game you will want to keep an eye on.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Related Links: Slime-San Home Page Slime-San on Steam
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