The Importance of Slime in Indie Games

It seems like a good 90% of pixel art games have a slime enemy in some form or other.

Whilst not overtly original, slime enemies (in my opinion) have an incredibly important role to play when it comes to getting to grips with a new game as a player, as well as a developer.

We all vaguely know that slimes are the bad guys. Perhaps from existing game experiences, or from watching movies like The Blob.

They also tend to be placed at a safe enough distance to allow their movement to be observed, and they often deal about as much damage as a potato fragment fired from a second-hand spud gun, so getting hit isn’t the end of the world.

Much like a golfer practicing their golf swing, this gives the player a brief window of time to get used to the controls of the game and strategise their attack.

A perfect example of this is the first Goomba in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. Okay, so Goombas aren’t exactly slimes, but if you squint hard enough, they’re arguably shaped like one (amongst other things)!

They’re not just great beginner enemies to tackle at the early stages of a game. They can also create challenges in later stages of a game by creeping up on you amidst a flurry of enemies, much like the slimes in Moonlighter.

The benefits of slime enemies is apparent for developers, too. For the solo dev who's art skills aren't anything to boast about, they're super easy to turn around and get in-game. Painting a simple blob on screen won't hold things up on the development side of things and would help to get the gears of a project in motion (and we all know how important momentum is during the early stages of a project).

As for the passionate artist or animator, they can take a simple blob and turn it into a real work of art.

I recently held a poll on Instagram asking which art style people preferred in the image above. Unsurprisingly, Option A was chosen as it was the clearest. Stylistically, I would have liked to have seen Option B come out on top, but realistically it wouldn't be bold enough to keep track of on screen. I’ll definitely explore ways to solve this, though, because I love the minimalist nature of that art style. It’s almost reminiscent of Hyper Light Drifter or Moonlighter.

With all that said, I’m going to base the main enemy race in Valham on slimes. The first enemy you encounter will be your typical run-of-the-mill slime for reasons explained above; however, they will soon evolve to possess things like skeletons or chimera-like creatures glued together by insidious slime.

I'd love to play a game where you actively took the role of a slime enemy going after pesky, meddling heroes!