Calling a game a souls-like or a souls-lite can immediately conjure up images of a dark, moody world filled with lumbering bosses that strike fear into a player's heart even before they open the door to the battlefield. Pancake Games and Whitethorn Games are shaking up that imagery of what a souls-lite can look like with the upcoming action-adventure game, Slime Heroes.
Instead of the harrowing and grungy world of traditional souls-likes, Slime Heroes is a bright and whimsical world where a small, charming little slime is tasked with stopping a mysterious corruption.
Both you and a friend can take on the fiercely corrupted enemies of Slime Heroes in a couch co-op adventure that spans six vibrant regions with a shared loot system, allowing the both of you to build up your characters with complementary abilities. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear like Slime Heroes will have any online play at launch, but it will feature a drop-in/drop-out system for local cooperative multiplayer.
Players will come slime-to-face with each of the gods ruling over the various regions, but first they will need to explore the various secret passageways, hidden areas, and unique dungeons full of puzzles. It may be tempting to back away from the adorably illustrated slime game now if you're not one to take to Souls games. But Slime Heroes has a few tricks up its sleeve that make it accessible and approachable to a wider audience, despite it's mega-sized boss battles.
The 'Souls'-like/lite genre, which gets it name from the historically difficult Dark Souls franchise, is widely regarded as containing games that are notorious for being hard to master. However, Whitethorn and Pancake Games have decided instead to focus on making Slime Heroes approachable and accessible to a wider audience. A list of pre-release accessibility features currently in the works for Slime Heroes was released on the Whitethorn Games website.
Slime Heroes will feature the following accessibility options:
- Optional double jump for more leniency and a greater margin of error for jumping puzzles.
- Increase or decrease the time allotted for timed puzzles.
- Alter elements of combat, including decreasing or increasing any of the following:
- Incoming enemy damage.
- Incoming enemy boss damage.
- Incoming world damage.
- Outgoing player damage.
- The rate of player stamina regeneration.
- Speed of incoming enemy attacks.
- Input remapping on keyboard and controller.
- Toggle switch for crouching.
- Independently adjustable audio for sound effects and music.
- Enable and disable flashing lights and camera shake.
- Subtitles for all dialogue on by default.
The debate about accessibility and approachability features in soulslike games frequently rages on social media, with players frequently arguing both for and against the inclusion of accessibility features in the Souls franchise and the indie games inspired by it. Players have argued for and against everything from easier difficulty settings to the value of a pause button. Even as the debates rage on, many indie studios, like Pancake Games and Whitethorn Games, see value in creating a more approachable soulslite experience for their player base.
Pancake Games is a small independent studio based in Seattle, and Slime Heroes is its debut title. Whitethorn Games is the indie publisher behind many cozy, easy-going games like APICO, Botany Manor, and Lake. Slime Heroes launches on February 13 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, on PC via Steam.
