Slimes

Important note: Slimes is a game that has plot elements that are viscerally dark, painful and uncomfortable. If you're emotionally fragile and can't handle legitimately dark stories, it may not be for you, and that's ok.

If you CAN handle it though? You absolutely should play this game. It truly EARNS the perfect final score I've given it.

Content warning for those who REALLY need it: (Potential spoilers, only click if you have a legit emotional trigger)


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I'm going to do something I normally don't do. I'm going to leave the best and strongest part of the game for last instead of leading with it.

Gameplay: Now THIS is the good stuff!

Note: I played this on the "intended" harder difficulty, but if you're just here for the story, there's a more accessible difficulty level you can play.

It's no secret if you've read other reviews of mine, but I love RPGs that have complex combat systems loaded with clever skills that allow for significant strategizing.

And oh MAN does Slimes deliver. I haven't enjoyed an RPGmaker game's combat this much in a seriously LONG while.

So, you have two characters, who start off relatively simple. One damage dealer, one healer.

At first, your gunslinger has 3 different guns, each serving a different use (guaranteed hits on flyers, stuns and heavy damage, and distributed damage, respectively), and your healer just heals.

But wait, they evolve over time!

Your gunslinger gets Damage buffs for himself that debuff the healer. Your healer gets all kinds of nifty new spells that buff or debuff himself or the gunslinger in exchange for buffing or debuffing the enemies.

There's a dramatic amount of back and forth through most battles as a result, and you will constantly be looking for new useful combinations of skills whenever you see a new combination of enemies, or level up and snag a new skill.

Also, since there's no additional equipment, and level ups only unlock new skills instead of stats boosts, the limited types of Slimes in the game all remain consistently relevant threats all the way to the end, and the true difficulty comes from the new and tricky combinations that get thrown at you as you go deeper into the dungeon.

Combine this with downright devious boss design that makes each of them feel like a near-impossible challenge, until you figure out how they work or get some leverage on them (at which point they open up and you feel this rush of "I can do this!"), and you have one of the best RPGmaker combat systems I have ever had the pleasure of playing.

This combat is EXCELLENT, I cannot possibly overstate how much I loved it.

The dungeon itself is somewhat simple, with a handful of puzzles or decision points that influence battles to come. Nothing too fancy, but just enough to be clever.

Also, the game openly encourages you to commit to your mission and kill every last slime in the entire dungeon by rewarding you with an optional journal entry that gives you additional lore or backstory on the world, or even small cutscenes. And to my delight, every single one of these awesome little side stories is relevant somehow, and they're all seriously worth earning.

Aesthetics and sound: Perfectly on-point.

Given that Slimes takes place in a brutally grimdark world with tiny spots of hope and some VERY occasional wacky shenanigans, the aesthetics of the game are perfect.

The art favors bold reds and blacks (ie: blood and death), which helps to sell the dark world, but keep it juuuust abstract enough to not be overbearing.

The music knows when to be kind of silly or atmospheric and when to be dark and creepy. Few of the tracks SUPER stand out as headbangers on their own, but they all fit their scenes so perfectly that they blend into the experience and enhance every moment.

Story - Art. Just...ART.

Ok, before I really get into the core of it all here...Let's set the table before we dig in.

Slimes is the story of a just-recently-industrialized world (So there are guns, trains and universities with football fields, but no planes), that was attacked by an invading alien creature, sparking a new paradigm: A world of magic and monsters and dungeons slapped down wholesale right into the midst of the old one.

Between this and the initially quirky art style and music, you might assume that this could be a lighthearted premise.

It's not.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in the nation the titular slime dungeon happens to reside in. The Republic of Engel.

Seeing as Mages gain their powers from the same Alien source that creates the monsters and dungeons, they face heavy persecution, not aided by an overzealous religous group that crusades heavily against anything it deems "tainted" by the Alien.

So, let's introduce our two protagonists, from a narrative point of view this time.

First, you have Julius, a gunslinging devout crusader, on a mission to exterminate every last slime in the dungeon for his holy "purge the land of everything cursed by the Alien" cause.

And you have...Err..."Healer", a...Well, magical healer and all around cinnammon roll of a character, who is just in it for enough money to keep himself fed and sheltered.

I think you can see where this is headed.

To put a point on it, why is our second guy's name "Healer"? Well, the gunsligner actively does not give a damn what his ally's name is and has no desire to learn it. And that is only the start of the downward spiral.

These two polar opposites, who rapidly come to despise each other, have to rely on each other for survival all the way down to the bottom of a dungeon full of surprisingly deadly slimes.

This is a viscerally rough story of rage, despair, corruption, cruelty, self-righteous pride, and hatred. So much hatred. And yet, through this painful journey, there is also something else. A beautiful catharsis that only gains strength from all the suffering endured.

Make no mistake, Slimes has something it wants to say, and it does. Not. Give. A. Damn if you aren't ready to hear it.

Slimes pulls no punches, has no mercy. It will strike you at your core, make you feel uncomfortable, and attack you relentlessly, both in gameplay and in the story.

You may become exhausted and want to stop playing, because the darkness and despair get too much for you. Even so...In fact, especially if that's so, I urge you to keep playing. I urge you to go for full completion (all the hidden logs gained for clearing a floor of all enemies).

I promise you, I PROMISE YOU, it will be worth every moment of rage, despair, or heartache.

This is the kind of story I wish I could tell even half as convincingly. Scitydreamer...Accept my humble thanks for the masterfully crafted, absolutely insane emotional roller coaster. It was a thing of beauty.

Conclusion: Where I try to convince you one last time that you NEED to experience this masterpiece

While the game certainly has flaws (like the irritation of having to manually reload your guns after each fight), holding any of them against the game would feel like nitpicking. Because they're nothing more than small annoyances, nothing that truly degrades the experience.

And honestly, everything else on offer in this gem of a game dwarfs the flaws by an incredible magnitude. Gameplay, art, and story, all of these are fantastically done.



So today...I do something I haven't ever done before.


I'm going to give this game a perfect score.


Scitydreamer, take a bow. You have earned it.


Slimes gets a flawless 5 shotgun blasts to the heart out of 5.