If you enjoy an action roguelike twin stick shooter and appreciate a game that puts the player in charge of lots of decisions, then Slimekeep could be a great fit for you. Created by BenBonk, this is a slime-tinged roguelike that constantly asks decisions of you, from how long the game will last to how you treat your pet slime. It is a buttery smooth experience that is a joy to play.
Slimekeep takes place over a maximum of 16 in-game days to take down the Slime King. You can choose when you want to face the Slime King, and the longer you leave it, the higher the ferry toll will be to take you to him. Each day serves as a procedurally generated world to either kill slimes for coins and to buy new weapons or upgrades, or to capture and farm slimes for points to improve your pet slime sidekick. You can lean into either side of the game or balance them as much as you like. Both and all routes in between are valid and approachable, and you can either automate or direct your pet slime, too.
Using keyboard and mouse controls (no controller yet) you’ll move from room to room each day through a fog of war approach. You won’t know what you get until you are in the room. Some rooms will have shops, weapon chests, story segments, gambling fountains for health restoration, or the tollman for the ferry to the end boss. Most rooms will have slimes in, though, and here is where the action kicks off. With over 50 weapons, you can equip and fire them off to kill slimes outright, or stay back and send in your pet slime instead. Your pet slime is set up to be more of a melee weapon at first, but you can pass a weapon over to it so you can have two guns on the map at one time. Your pet slime always goes straight for the kill, so if you want to capture and harvest the slimes back at your farm, you’ll need to get in quick or manually pull the slime away from what you want to capture.
Whilst shooting works somewhat like a twin stick shooter, using the mouse to aim around the screen and shoot, capturing slimes requires you to keep the slime within the hoover’s range to build up a meter. When it’s full, by holding down the left mouse button, the meter is replaced by a timing gauge to let go of the mouse button to capture it. Fail any of this and slime escapes. Your vacuum is battery-powered, which drains quickly like ammo. You can find battery packs occasionally, but you’ll likely end up using coins to buy them using your home computer before you go to bed to end a day’s slime hunting. The longer you take to capture a slime, the less efficient you are, and the more expensive it becomes.
Enemy slimes come in different classes and this impacts how useful they might be for you to farm for points. Once a slime is caught, you need to deliver it back to your home (made quicker using teleportation slime puddles dotted around levels) and this converts it to points. Your pet slime has a skill tree that is slime class dependent. Some classes unlock different melee damage improvements, or a smoke screen attack to confuse slimes, or the ability to maybe heal a health point on a special attack. Half the skill trees have choices too, forcing the player into a specific build for the pet slime. It works exceptionally well and makes each run feel unique. Nothing carries over between runs, so trying new setups to suit your play style is key. Bosses are optional, as is how much exploration you truly want. If you are low on health, going to bed early and leaving things behind is the smarter option.
With tight controls, a catchy chiptune soundtrack, tons of replayability, lots of weapons to unlock which appear in future runs, and plenty of builds to try out – Slimekeep is a clever and thoughtfully designed action roguelike. If you struggle with the Gameboy green hue of the graphics, you can customise the colour hue as you see fit. There’s also a Slimepedia and a few other story beats that you can unlock over multiple runs if you want to lose more hours to it. Slimekeep is a game that delivers fun and challenge whilst keeping a cheeky wink personality on the side. Enjoyable.
Review copy provided by the developer. Slimekeep is out now on PC.
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