Slime-San is all about player skill and, well, being a slime stuck in a big worm’s digestive tract. It’s fast, hard and abrasive, but in all of the right ways.
To say that Slime-San is difficult would be an understatement. The game is hard from the tutorial level all the way to the end. Fabraz studio has taken inspirations from other games in the masochistic platformer genre and put their own twist on them, with the most obvious influence in Super Meat Boy‘s single screen design. Slime-San follows the same set up that most platformers have, going from level to level by moving up and down, left and right, except using smaller levels to make up a bigger whole. So, the first screen of an area will introduce a specific gimmick, then when that screen is completed and we move to the next, the idea and obstacles get harder until they’re multiplied to such a degree that it can be a bit overwhelming.
That’s not to say that Slime-San isn’t a lot of fun though. The game controls super tight and the pin point precision that is required for the platforming feels natural. Slime-San has the ability to slow down time, jump up walls and dash in the air, and all of the mechanics work cohesively and allow for some extraordinarily great feeling platform action.
The game has already been out for a few months on PC, and this month it finally dropped on the Nintendo Switch, which presents some differences between portable or TV modes. When playing in handheld mode it’s quite hard to make out much detail in the levels. The game has many bright and beautiful colors, but they all seem to mix together on the Nintendo Switch‘s screen. I put the blame half on the screen and half on the game itself. Slime-San has many small moving parts and on top of that the main primary colors of the game are blue, red and green, so when it’s in a smaller view it can actually look quiet muddled. My time with the game in hand held mode actually gave me a headache because there was so much going on the little screen. However, when the system is docked and on a bigger screen everything is great! The game allows you to change the borders around it, which is good because the default pulsing and twitching of the worm’s stomach actually turned out to be too much for me, but after I changed it to something more simple it really allowed me to focus on the game itself.
Slime-San is a game that takes major platforming influences and makes them its own. It has all of the tropes we have grown to expect as gamers from the genre: you know that cool area in Super Mario World you like? Well here it is but you can die in one hit and you’re also a slime. It’s a game that is only shown at its true potential when it’s being played as fast as possible. Once I figured out all of the mechanics, I was having so much fun sliding, ramming and jumping up the intestines of a stupid worm that I really didn’t mind dying so much along the way.
This review is based on an eShop code of game sent to SideQuesting by the publisher.
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