![]() "For a game that is over six years old, every month on every major platform, there's over a million hours of play time on Slime Rancher" The team also took the new console generation into consideration, and how it wanted to bring a new game to more platforms. It wasn't an expansion for very long though, and the team decided quite early on that it couldn't add much more to Slime Rancher without radically altering the structure of the game. This isn't unusual – Popovich explains that it was born out of an expansion for Slime Rancher. Slime Rancher 2 looks and feels like an extension of the first game. I love that it's a huge rush to be able to do that." I want us to be doing stuff that people look at and are kind of amazed at how many people worked on it, or it ends up being competitive with much bigger games or bigger ideas. "For Monomi Park, be it then or now, I want our studio to be punching up in its weight class. "I already loved a lot of the ingredients that were in it, and it felt like something that we could do but that would also look bigger than the studio size reflected. "The reason that Slime Rancher stuck out was because it was a 3D first person game with cute characters," he tells us. The pair went through a number of ideas, and Popovich recalls trying to identify the studio's capabilities, the type of game it had the resources to create, and the risks that came with each idea. Slime Rancher launched into early access in 2016, followed by a console release in 2017 And when I'm determined to do something, I will see it through.'" "As much as it started with me sitting down and Googling how to use Unity, it really was not that chaotic. " joined shortly thereafter and we worked a nine to five to make this game over the course of about a year and a half, so it was very regular work hours and it was a really fun time," he adds. The pair spent a couple of weekends working together to see if it was a good fit, because despite spending time at the same studio, they'd not properly collaborated as a team. Popovich then pitched the idea to Mike Thomas, a friend and former Three Rings co-worker, who would become the other co-founder of Monomi Park. Then I created a prototype for Slime Rancher as best I could because I don't code, so it was just throwing scripts together." "I didn't take many vacations or anything and we had some savings that I could use while I figured it out. "I took two weeks off, and then I sat down and Googled how to use Unity," Popovich says. In 2014, when the time came to start afresh on a new game, Popovich felt as though it was time for him to chase the dream himself, and left the studio to iron out the idea of Slime Rancher. He spent almost a decade at Three Rings Design, a former Sega studio, where he led development on MMO Spiral Knights. Making games has been a lifelong goal for Popovich, and starting and maintaining an independent studio was a big part of that goal. ![]() "So when you're doing an indie sequel, there's already a raised eyebrow to it." "Our burden within the industry is we're always innovating, we're going to take very seriously and we're going to push it, and polish it, and it's going to be fun," he says. Popovich thinks that there's a double standard when it comes to how people evaluate AAA sequels next to indie ones, and says players can be a little more critical of the latter. When you're at AAA, that's what you're aiming for, you're cranking out sequels because you have courted a large audience, who knows annually or every two years what they're getting, and they're gonna be ready for that." "We've had great fortune that we broke through, so there was an audience there to receive it. "I had anxiety right up until we released it, because the indie sequel is a very risky proposition," Popovich tells. So far, the reception is largely positive – the early access title has sold over 400,000 copies in its debut week at the end of September, and is already lining up nominations for awards, just like its predecessor.įor Monomi Park founder and CEO Nick Popovich, making a follow up to a successful indie a dicey business. One studio on its journey to find that balance is Slime Rancher developer Monomi Park, having just released Slime Rancher 2, the follow up to the 2016 hit. It has to be bigger and better than the game that spurred it and offer a new experience, while staying true to a particular vision or audience. Releasing a sequel to a critically acclaimed game can be tough.
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