"There was a bug in Oblivion that allowed you to put a mundane object into a bow and shoot infinite amounts of that into the environment and break it," explains Monomi Park's Nick Popovich. "You could do that with melons. I always thought that was hilarious. You could do a bunch of silly things with it." This bug would eventually inspire a game about wrangling slimes.
In this 2017 GDC postmortem, Popovich discusses the development history of Slime Rancher and how it was managed during its first year of early access.
Popovich goes into how Slime Rancher was developed, what the prototyping process was like, and the constraints the team encountered during the early stages of development. He describes how the constraints were used to make design decisions. "I can't animate for a damn," he admits. "so we used limbless slimes as the central actors in our game."
Designers interested in hearing about the development of Slime Rancher can now watch the talk completely free via the official GDC YouTube channel!
About the GDC Vault
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.