Slime Rancher price: which of the two to buy first

Search the Slime Rancher price and you get two answers, because there are two games and the store listings do a poor job of telling you which is which. That would be a minor annoyance except for one awkward fact: the older, cheaper game is the better-reviewed one, and as of today it has more people playing it than the sequel does. So the cheap option is not the compromise here. It is arguably the right purchase.

The whole game runs on one verb: suck things up with a vacpack, put them somewhere else. Everything else is built on that. (Official Steam screenshot)

What the Slime Rancher price gap actually buys you

The original Slime Rancher came out in August 2017 from Monomi Park, a small independent studio, and has been discounting for eight years. The sequel, Slime Rancher 2, entered early access in September 2022 and reached 1.0 in September 2025, which makes it barely a year old as a finished game.

That age difference is the entire price gap. The sequel is not several times more game; it is several times newer. Check both live figures on the game pages linked above — we do not print numbers, because they move daily and the spread between official stores and key resellers on these two titles is unusually wide.

What the gap is worth depends on which of these you are:

• You have never played either. Start with the original. It is complete, it is cheap, and if the loop does not hold you, you have lost very little.
• You finished the first and want more. The sequel is the obvious purchase and there is no case against it.
• You want the prettier one. The sequel is visibly a newer engine generation, and if that is the deciding factor, pay the gap.

The review numbers, and why they point backwards

This is the part that surprises people. On Steam, the 2017 original sits at Overwhelmingly Positive — 98% across roughly 157,000 reviews. The 2022 sequel sits at Very Positive — 94% across roughly 50,000. Both are excellent. But the eight-year-old game is the one with the higher score and three times the sample.

Concurrent players tell the same story. When we checked today, 20 September 2026, the original had more people in it than the sequel. For a game approaching its tenth birthday against a sequel in its first year out of early access, that is an unusual result, and it is the strongest single argument for buying the cheaper one first.

The 2017 launch trailer from Monomi Park's own channel. Nine years on, this is still an accurate advert for what you get.

Where the sequel is genuinely better

None of the above means the sequel is a lesser game. It is a bigger, prettier version of the same idea, set on Rainbow Island rather than the Far, Far Range, with a conservatory you build out instead of a ranch you inherit. The slime designs are more varied and the traversal is less fiddly.

The honest criticism is scope. The original's structure closes properly — there is an ending and a set of secrets behind it. The sequel spent three years in early access adding regions, and its shape reflects that: it is broader and less resolved. If you like being given a world and left alone, that suits you. If you want a game that finishes, the first one finishes better.

Rainbow Island in the sequel. The generational jump in lighting is real, and it is most of what the extra money buys. (Official Steam screenshot)

Three years of early access went mostly into new regions and new slime types rather than new systems. (Official Steam screenshot)

The DLC question, which is simpler than it looks

The original has three add-ons: the Secret Style Pack, the VR Playground, and a Galactic Bundle that collects things together. The sequel, as of today, has none at all.

Skip all of them on a first purchase. The Secret Style Pack is a cosmetic reskin of slimes you have not met yet, and buying it before you have played is buying a joke whose setup you have not heard. The VR Playground is a separate mode for headset owners and irrelevant to everyone else. The bundle is only worth looking at if you already know you want the pieces.

This is the rare series where the base game is the whole game and the add-ons are genuinely optional, which is worth saying plainly because it is so often not true — see our rules for not overpaying for the version of this that applies everywhere else.

When these two actually discount

We have held a continuous price record for both since 18 June 2026. Within that window the patterns differ sharply.

The original has been discounted essentially the whole time, drifting in a narrow band rather than spiking. Its floor in our record came earlier in the summer, and today's best listing sits above that floor rather than at it — not by much, but the difference is real. There is no urgency to buy it at any particular moment, because it is always cheap and the swing between good and best is small.

The sequel is the opposite, and this is the timely part: as of today, 20 September 2026, the best listing we can see for Slime Rancher 2 is the lowest point anywhere in our record. It reached that level this week and has held it. The context helps explain it — the sequel's 1.0 anniversary falls on 23 September, and anniversary discounting is a normal pattern for independent studios.

The 1.0 launch trailer, carried here on PlayStation's channel rather than the developer's.

If you have been waiting on the sequel, that is the signal. If you want a fuller explanation of why a record low is not automatically a reason to buy, we wrote one: what a historical low actually tells you.

Buying either one safely

Both games appear on a long list of key resellers, and the cheapest listing on the original in particular can sit at a fraction of the official store figure. That is not automatically a problem, but it is worth two checks before you click.

First, confirm the listing is the Standard Edition and not a DLC pack sold under a similar name — with the Secret Style Pack and the Galactic Bundle in circulation, this is an easy mistake to make on a cluttered listing page. Second, check the activation region. Independent titles this cheap are exactly the ones where a restricted key ends up unusable.

Breeding two slime types produces a Largo. Most of the original's depth comes out of that one rule. (Official Steam screenshot)

The original opens up further than its first hour suggests — most of the secrets sit behind regions you unlock late. (Official Steam screenshot)

If neither is quite right

Slime Rancher is usually filed with Stardew Valley and Terraria, and the comparison holds loosely — all three are first-person or side-on sandboxes you can play at your own pace, and none of them will ever be expensive again. The difference is that Slime Rancher is much shorter and far less systems-heavy than either. It is a fifteen-hour game, not a permanent hobby.

Both run happily on modest hardware, which makes them a sensible pair for a handheld — our Steam Deck shortlist covers what to look for. And if the appeal is the low-stress part rather than the slimes specifically, the cosy games round-up is a better starting point than either of these.

The bottom line

Buy the original first. It is the higher-rated game, it is the cheaper game, it is the one with more people playing it today, and it ends properly. For a newcomer there is no sensible argument for starting anywhere else, and the money you save covers the sequel later.

Buy the sequel now only if you have already finished the first one. In that case today is a good day to do it, because it is sitting at the lowest point we have recorded and the 1.0 anniversary falls this week. Check both live on the Slime Rancher page and the Slime Rancher 2 page before you commit — the reseller spread on both is wide enough to be worth thirty seconds.