When people think about Microsoft, the word “cute” usually does not come to mind, yet the company recently announced that Slime Rancher is coming to Xbox One thanks to the ID@Xbox program. You may have heard of this one as it is currently on Early Access for PC gamers. For those of us who prefer playing on consoles, though, this is a great move to bring Slime Rancher over to Xbox One. This is the kind of game that is hard to describe without letting someone actually play it, but here is my best attempt at explaining it.

Slime Rancher is a game very true to its name. You are a rancher with some farm land and you are equipped with some futuristic vacuum/gun device. What is your aim in this world? Collecting slimes! The slime creatures are basically just like basic enemies you’d find in every RPG ever. The difference here is there is no RPG style fighting to be had. Feed them, hit them, or do whatever you like and then vacuum them up. Once they are stored in the vacuum, they can then be shot out into a slime cage. Collecting slimes has its benefits. When they are happy and well-fed they go potty and their little poos act as currency.

So far that seems to be the main loop of Slime Rancher. Players adventure outside the confines of their farm and find slimes to collect. There are all kinds of slimes out there in the wild, too. For example you may find the typical blue smiling slime as well as kitty slimes. Some other slimes, such as the boulder slime, even have special effects. Each and every one of them is equally adorable. It appears collecting them is not enough, however. Slimes can grow impatient and may break out of their enclosure if you do not tend to them for long enough.

It would be nice to see where the team goes next with Slime Rancher, as they already have a good basic setup in place. Finding strange new slimes and keeping them as pets sounds like fun, but there should be even more to do. We are seeing hints of that already with the fact that different elemental slimes can combine for unique effects. Hopefully they have a solid plan for their Early Access updates to keep content feeling fresh. Graphics and audio are already fairly polished so it is up to the gameplay to become more compelling.

If Slime Rancher sounds up your alley then you can already grab it from Steam for $19.99. It will probably be a while before the game is fully released, as it is currently on update 0.3.3. Or, you can wait a little bit to get your slime collecting on via Xbox One when it arrives in the near future. A date hasn’t been announced yet, but Slime Rancher looks like a good candidate for the Xbox One Game Preview program.