Developer: Fabraz
Publisher: Headup
Released: 2017
Platforms: Steam | GOG | PS4 | Switch | Xbox One

At the time of writing, I’ve only put in an hour or so into Super Meat Boy, but I can confidently say that Slime-san is an incredible “clone.”

The premise is simple: a giant worm eats the hero. The hero must escape while meeting a few friends along the way. Much like SMB, Slime-san goes for that visual contrast of cutesy and disgusting.

Slime-san understands the brilliance of short-but-sweet bursts of challenging platforming, where death immediately spits you back into the action. It’s another game in today’s collection that bolsters the “Just one more run” attitude.

The controls and level design are supremely polished, providing a tough but fair experience while traversing each “world.” Slime-san himself tackles obstacle courses simply by jumping, dashing, sticking to walls, and changing his body into a permeable state. The latter ability has the added benefit of slowing down time itself, which I can’t overstate how useful I found when navigating the intense late-game levels.

If desired, the player can swap out Slime-san for a different buddy that alters their movement. For example, I occasionally used Kawaii-san, whose jumps are floaty but higher than the regular control scheme. I mostly played the game with default Slime-san, but I love that the options are there.

The game offers plenty of stretch goals for players desiring more than beating each stage. I grabbed all the collectible apples, as I found pride in testing my platforming skills. There are also special coins to collect, which unlock smaller one-off projects that the devs bundled into the main game.

For an especially brutal challenge, each level has a “Speedrun” time to complete, which I avoided like the plague. If you want to be a masochist with no room for error, Slime-san has you covered.

There’s also the option to discover other NPCs trapped inside the worm. Doing so expands the hub map known as Slumptown. Some of them unlock bonus features (e.g. the minigames mentioned earlier), while others are simply for world building’s sake. I wasn’t huge on finding every NPC, but it was cute seeing Slumptown grow.

A surprising amount of content is packaged with Slime-san. I had to title this review with “vanilla” because several free DLCs were patched into the game since I bought it years ago. Bonus maps and even a custom level editor exist! Should my interest return, I will definitely dive into the DLC.

Add an amazing soundtrack into the mix (so awesome, that it triggers Youtube’s Content ID system), and Slime-san is a great time. Fabraz did a fantastic job building a sleek, challenging, and rewarding game to play.