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It's a game about bouncy Slimes who poop gems worth virtual money, and a Rancher who has a vacuum gun and amazeballs jet pack. Who cannot die, but apparently has an extreme allergy to sea water. Where kitty cat things can become radioactive kitty cat things, and radioactive things can become radioactive living rocks things... all by eating each other's poop.
It's a game. You are WAYYYYYYYYYY overthinking it.
It is also possible that the plorts differing values hints at their use in an advanced society. The crystal plorts, for example, come from slimes which appear to drain or slow energy in their given area, creating ice. Such a material would be a rather miraculous source of refridgeration or cooling of advanced machinery, computers, and so on. Phosphorous plorts are used as a power source in various items produced in the science shop as well so I would imagine an electrical production feature is at work there. It is all speculation, but fun to think about.
The more I considered it while playing the more I began to think the slimes were actually genetically engineered. Probably by humans but, perhaps by extraterrestrials. I lean towards humans because of the faces and "cuteness" which would make them more useful for the corporation's farmers (it seems clear that you are the only one on the planet, thus making them anthropomorphic would make such a posting less psychologically tenuous for a person - and thus cheaper than sending their farmers antidepressents constantly).
The reason is their life cycles are too fast and circular. They eat, produce a valuable resource, and can eat each others waste to join the genetic material of another brand of slime to their own to produce even more resources. The Tarr also reeks of a control mechanism to keep them from going all Tribble on whatever planet they have been dropped on. They are perfect factory organisms. I know I have used Tarr to clean out underproducing slime pens, went in with the water cannon once the underproducers were dead, and replaced them with more valuable creatures.
The one thing that keeps me from fully going with my hypothesis on factory farming is the ruins you find about. Too many synthetic angles and signs of possible non-human inhabitants.
While i really appreciate the input, my theory about how plorts are just an expelled chunk of slime supports their properties. A hunter can turn invisible, and if you look in the Slimepedia it says "Plortonomics: Amazingly, a serum can be made from hunter slime plorts that can actually render a person invisible! ...." Boom slimes explode (supposedly due to some kind of vibration as said ocassionally by Viktor Humphries over the Range Exchange and as stated in the Slimepedia) and "Highly volatile boom plorts have all sorts of applications, including powering rocket thrusters and demolitions. Military organizations value their highly destructive capabilities for "medical technology and other research". Imagine that!" So the need for plorts seems pretty well explained in-game. The theory about phosphor slimes producing some kind of energy makes sense as well, they produce not only energy for themselves to move but also light. I feel like, maybe if the slimes didn't show such intelligence and emotions (affection like a tabby will show by following and booping the player, anger like ferals show, general fear of tarrs, etc) then the entire slime would essentially be ground up into materials.
As i said in the last paragraph, the plorts are used for many applications. Although, a crystal slime actually produces spikes of crystal, "Thought to be a means of expelling internal heat, these crystal patches are ultra-hot and can be shattered if splashed with water."
The genetic engineering idea is interesting. I don't think slimes are made by humans. Nobody knows what the ruins are about, meaning that slimes have been around since before humans have found them. And I'm sure news would've gotten out about the scientist(s) who made them. If extra-terrestrials made the slimes instead, it would explain why nobody really understands where they came from or what the ruins are about. But you have to wonder what exactly the ruins are for. When the next area comes out, I think there may be hints to this but for now it seems like the ruins were made by either slimes (unlikely) or a civilization that worshipped or lived very closely with them. There are lots of areas in the ruins where slimes live and areas that seem to be farms. This civilization seems very big as well, spreading out over most of the map. It seems strange that nobody or nothing is left behind to show what lived there besides those giant slime statues. Many ancient civilizations on Earth leave behind drawings, either of people or the environment, but there isn't anything left behind that shows animate life (except the slime statues). I think quantum slimes may have something to do with the downfall or destruction of this civilzation, but more on that later.
I believe that maybe the slimes are almost recycled. When a slime appears or "is born", they pop out of the ground or the weird, presumably coral, tubes scattered around the Far Far Range. When a slime is killed by a tarr, it's completely consumed, and then the tarr splits. The tarr is using the material and energy from the slime it ate to split and create another, because it cannot support more mass. When a tarr is killed, is splashes apart and soaks into the ground. All the matter is returned to the earth. Then, later, it manifests again as a new slime. I believe that somehow, the basic types of slime and plort automatically seperate. Possibly similar to how a human immune system will reject a transplanted organ, when a largo gives off plorts or when all the matter from a tarr breaks apart soaks back into the ground, the basic types of slime seperate and collect together again.
A quick theory about tarrs. I think tarrs form because the slime becomes so unstable, its body can no longer recognize it's individual pieces. Another theory is that the slime becomes some sort of weird sociopathic cannibal. Like how feral slimes will attack Bea, a tarr now has an insatiable hunger. I wonder if a tarr ate a water slime, would it die? Since a water slime is made of, you guessed it, mostly water. Anyway. I'm done for now. Thank you.
I'm going to comment on this with a quote from myself from another thread also disscussing the lore/science of slime rancher.
Also, I think space PETA (SPETA?) would get in the way of any mass slime genocide.
I'd figure that the Slime Sea would be were all slime-matter runs off to, and eventually congeals into various slimes, and occasionally largos, as we do see them poping out of the ground like normal slimes. Newly formed largos are commonly just barely scraped togther, resulting in them being hungry (Feral) strait from the seaworks. I would assume that the slimy tubeing that they all tend to pop out of is somehow linked to a lot of slimey aquifer that run through various parts of the island, and only certain kinds of slime are permiable through the specific rock found at each location, causing only certain slimes to appear at certain areas. Largos require larger, rarer places to fit through, so they'll only be found fresh at very specific locations. The overaboundance of pink slimes and their multi-permiable pre-slime ooze in the Seaworks would explain why most fresh largos end up as pink-largos, and why pink slimes are abundant everywhere.
But then, how would slimes begin to favorite various Hen Hens? Last I checked, thier description describes them as being "genetically-modified to be 2x as tasty as thier cousins on earth," or something along those lines. Were hen hens somehow sent to the planet first, and acidently introduced into the ecosystem? What did carnivorous slimes eat before Hen Hens? I would think other slimes, but with the previously established intellegence, I would think they could have somehow talked it out in some slightly more primitive way. Perhaps there were rivalries between these slimes. What else would a rocky slime need those sharp edges for, come to think of it. They clearly don't help against the Tarr, nor do any other atributes of the slimes. Then again, they may just be a biproduct of the slimes composition, as I don't think that with the previously established system of slime "reproduction," any evolution would take place... This is an alien world.
Some time must have passed since Hen Hens were introduced to the Far Far range, as they did develope 2 subspecies, the Brair and the Rocky. And the former of the two is describe as having tribes? Something about Hen Hens just don't add up...
1) I never even considered that pink slimes posed as Bob. I figured they may be a new type of slime (they seem very purple in bob's picture) that is much more intelligent than their "cousins". I considered that they may be "cousins" to the quantum slime, since they play with a rubiks cube that would imply they are intelligent, but their's is more of a premonition than real intelligence.
2) I was just wondering about the Slime Sea. It does make a lot of sense that it would be an aquifer of slime, its not the same as the water in a pond, instead its much murkier and seems to absorb whatever falls in. It could also be a reference to the theory of evolution, where all life comes from a common ancestor that once lived in the sea.
3) That is a tricky question.... I think by the time that the planet had been advertised and seen as safe enough for a young adult to go to (Bea) people would've been on the planet for some time. Hen hens were probably introduced when people were, or just before as some kind of base was set up for the original human inhabitants. Im sure hen hens could've escaped or been introduced and fit in naturally, although it doesn't make much sense since carnivorous slimes have been around a long time, long enough for there to be statues of them at the gate to the Ruins, there must have been something for them to eat. The presence of hen hens in the Ruins as well is suspicious. (Outside of legit scientific inquiry... Does Briar Hen Hens is ancient civilization?????? Illuminati confirm??>??? I want to believe)
And prefer fruit over chicken.
Its entry does describe it as the primordial pool from which all slime may have originated, and that it is essentially entirely slime itself. Also that it's potentially a major transportation system for slimes.
I would love if the devs made that the big reveal.
The slime sea origin hypothesis does make sense. It would explain the largos always being born angry/feral too, from what I have seen. Still, I think most of the evidence I see and presented here leans towards their creation at the hands of a corporation (likely the same one you work for). The sea origin would actually be the easiest way to propogate such an resource spawning organism. A corporation terraforms a world, seeds the ocean with autoambiogenetic material, and there you have a resource producing moon or world, ripe for exploitation.
While I tend to lean towards human creation of the slimes, I will admit that one of the big issues I saw with it is the ruins and the locked doors. Initially, these seemed to hint at an older culture but I am not so sure the longer I play. One problem is the logs you find past locked doors left by your predacessor. If the doors were unlocked by him to leave the log, then why are they locked when you arrive? Did he re-lock them upon leaving? Why did he do that, if so?
Imagine you are the kind of psycopath who could run some heartless, money-hungry mega-corporation and look at it from a pure, demonically pragmatic point of view. What sort of people volunteer for years long missions to another world to farm, alone, in some distant star system? I imagine the psychology isn't all that different from those who leave the city to live in the rural areas of our own world. Escaping the confines of concrete, steel, and the daily grind for a chance at a quiet, simple life. Add to this the prospect of going to another planet and you can assume the person volunteering also hankers for adventure.
If I am the CEO sending this interstellar farmer, spending who knows how much to ferry him to and, presumably, back from god-knows-where I want to maximize my profit margin while minimizing the risk. What are the risks?
The farmer gets lonely and hangs himself. Answer: give the slimes the ability to express some pseudo-emnotion like a pet. Give the farmer the ability to stay in email-like contact with Earth.
The farmer, hungering for adventure, explores outside of the safety bounds I have set for them and gets themselves killed. Answer: give them the illusion of an adventure. Locked doors, chests, hobbies, goals - give them some ruin full of mystery amd tailor made to manipulate their desire for adventure in a safe (and, more importantly, lucrative) way.
Why are the docks, the caves, etc all locked behind literal pay-walls? It all strikes me as the manipulation of human psychology by a heartless megacorporation to maximize profit and minimize possible loss. You work and slave away in a cubicle, get sick of it, and escape but there is no escape from the corporation, who expected you to get sick of it and has the perfect "escape" for you in a way that ensures they still suck you dry in the end.
To start this theory off, I want to ask two simple questions. Who created the ruins, and what happened to them?
I hypothesize that, at the peak of their civilization, two scenarios had resulted in the native people disappearing from the planet of Far Far Range. In one scenario, they had either vacated to a different planet altogether, or, in the second scenario that I find most likely, were incapable of escaping the end of their civilization. The reason why such scenarios would occur in the first place is quite debatable, but I can see two causes that would affect the Far Far Range's native precursor civilization.
One cause for the downfall of these native precursors could be an economic problem. There was simply too much demand for the limited resources. So much so that they would readily go to war with each other for whatever scraps they could eke out a living by.
The second cause for their downfall could be a disaster that brewed right under their noses till it was too late for them to realize what was happening and stop it in time. Many of our own past civilizations suffered from various natural disasters that ended their reign, ranging from erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, firestorms, floods, droughts, plagues, famines, wars, and even meteor impacts.
But I believe that both causes ended the native precursor civilization. To put it more accurately, it was an economic problem that eventually turned into a ticking time bomb.
My theory: The native precursors were doing what they could to solve their economic problem, but haven't found many solutions that were effective in stopping the collapse of their economy. A scientist then discovered a way to create a new lifeform capable of transforming biological matter into a usable resource the native precursor civilization desperately needed. These creatures became so widespread and popularized that they even built a temple to idolize their saviors that saved them from their economic collapse, which happens to be our mascots in Slime Rancher.
Time would pass as the native precursors experimented with these new bio-engineered slime lifeforms, discovering what other resources they were capable of producing. They managed to breed new types of slimes following the economic crisis, which then grew in popularity even more, and continued to explode in population. However, once the scientists discovered a way to combine the traits of two slimes into each other, that was when things must have went downhill quickly.
The Tarr must have been an unintended side effect the bio-engineers didn't account for when they created the largo variant of the slimes. As such, The Tarr began to spread epidemically, consuming slimes and native precursors alike in a wave of hunger that nearly consumed the Far Far Range in its entirety. The epidemic was so bad that it resulted in the creation of The Slime Sea. The countless cities that had once existed was now flooded with slime, which then eroded to rust and dust on the Slime Sea Bed over time. What was left of the precursor native civilization could only be found at the tops of mountains, aka the ruins we find.
But like all lifeforms, the slimes themselves had evolved over the years. The Slime Sea, which may have once been a massive black and rainbow kaleidoscope of roiling Tarr, seemed to have evolved a cure for its own insatiable appetite, which can prevent The Tarr from consuming the Slime Sea and turning it into more Tarr. Or it could be said that The Slime Sea was a byproduct of The Tarr cannibalizing on its fellow slime brethren, or simply the fluid of the countless de-spawning Tarr that dripped and collected over the years to form said Slime Sea.
And this happened so long ago, which explains the existence of fossilized slimes. Since fossilization is a process that takes several thousands of years, it would mean this cataclysmic event happened 10,000 years ago, or even more.
Anyway, I said my piece. Hope I entertained you with my own theories on the hypothetical lore of The Far Far Range.
Quantum slimes could be an obvious exception to this, though, as the in-game lore already proposes that something happened or was used to transform them and give them their current abilities.
Plorts are equally easy and simple to explain. It is basically just waste from whatever slimes eat that they don't need. It is probably a type of polymer, and polymers can be made with organic molecules, so that explains why they stay solid even in water. Polymers in real life take on a semi-solid form that can be contorted into other shapes. The properties of slime plorts can be catalytic if ingested by other slimes of a different type, and the expansion in size that happens when a small slime becomes a Largo exemplifies the catalytic chemical reactions going on inside them. Different simple molecules reacting with each other to become more complex molecules. And for those who ask why a slime would excrete chemical compounds that cause us to do things like becoming invisible, it would be useful to remember that just because we can use a component in a slime's waste does not mean the slimes themselves still need it.
Slimes also look to be the only native inhabitants left on the planet. There are a few native fruits like the kookadobas and cuberries but the rest were probably all introduced by human colonists. Same with the chickens. I would imagine the native ecology originally consisting of slimes eating each others' plorts and eventually becoming predatory Tarrs which in turn lower surrounding slime populations to keep them from depleting their environment.
I had a somewhat original idea regarding the Slime Sea, though. For any of you who have watched a lot of Star Trek: DS9 episodes, you might know about Changelings and about the Great Link on their native planet. Basically, Changelings are semi-solid amorphous organisms much like slimes and the "ocean" on their homeworld is basically one huge mass of all the Changelings fused together with one another. The Slime Sea could be the same thing; it could be one gigantic mass composed of all the de-solidified slimes that have fallen into it. And, just like an ocean of water, it either evaporates into a "Slime Cycle" (much like Earth's water cycle) or it forms something like a water table under the landmasses which eventually finds itself ascending to the surface as slimes.
Finally, about the original inhabitants that made the ruins and the teleportation devices, anything is up to interpretation but to me there is nothing all that mysterious about it. civilizations collapse all the time from exhausted resources, warfare, disease, social strife, etc. Or maybe nothing happened to them. Maybe they decided to leave the planet and go elsewhere, leaving it uninhabited. Who knows.
I'm only somewhat familiar with ToS, Next Generation, Voyager, and some of the movies. '3'