Slime Heroes Review: Little slime, big heart

Every now and then, you come across an idea for a game that seems like such a no-brainer that you kinda sit and wonder how nobody’s thought to do it before. When it’s sitting in front of you, it seems so obvious. How has it not always been this way? And the answer is simple: because somebody has to do it for the first time. It’s even better when that thing finally happens and it feels like a thing that was made for you. At its best, that’s Slime Heroes, a cute, and cuddly Souls-like from developer Pancake Games that you can play with your friends, one of the things I’ve always wanted more Souls-likes to incorporate. It’s a kinder, gentler, more approachable game you can play with a friend or a young kid but still appreciate as an adult.

Slime Heroes is charming from the jump. Your absolutely adorable, customizable slime (mine was blue and affixed with a permanent grin) is friends with a kind of powerful cat-dragon, and the two of them live together in the forest. Unfortunately, corruption is spreading across their idyllic home, and the barrier your friend has erected is failing, so your cozy forest grove is soon overrun with purple goo monsters. Your buddy sacrifices themself to teleport you to safety, and then you’re on your own. Time to drive back the corruption, rescue the six Guardians, and save the world. Piece of cake, right? Thing is, nobody really believes in you, not even the strange monkey dude who talks like Yoda and guides you along (and serves as the bonfire equivalent). After all, you’re just a slime.

But you’re not helpless. At first, you’ve just got your fists and your wits, but you’ll soon find a sword and get to whacking. All of the weapons in Slime Heroes — you’ll earn more as you vanquish the game’s bosses — have a basic light attack combo and a heavy attack, but they all feel different from one another. The spear, for instance, doesn’t have the punch of the sword, but it’s got reach, while the hammer is a powerhouse that’ll take out most enemies with two hits, provided you give yourself the time to swing it. Add in a dodge (Slime Heroes’ are regulated by charges; they regenerate fairly quickly, but you can’t spam it) and you have the basis for a pretty standard combat system. What makes Slime Heroes unique, however, are hats and its skill system.

Skills for kills, Slime

Hats are Slime Heroes’ one and only piece of gear. Your little slime isn’t gonna be wearing chain mail any time soon, but a hat? Who doesn’t like a little slime in a hat? Thing is, they’re not just fashion accessories. In addition to looking cute (one is a leaf! One is a little crown!), they give you a single status effect like “you gain health when you land several attacks in a row” or “enemies will drop more shards” (think souls) or “here’s an extra heart, try to die less.” Hats matter because a single change makes a big difference. This isn’t a Souls game; there are no flasks. If you want a way to restore your health, you wear a hat, or you take a risk and equip one that does something else and bet on your skills. It’s a good system that encourages you to approach encounters with a strategy in mind and switch things up on the fly if your best-laid plan fizzles under the bright lights.

Then there are the skills you’ll find, either out in the world itself or from slaying enemies. You start off with basic stuff: a projectile, a tornado, and so on, but as you play, you get neat stuff like a butterfly familiar who will attack enemies for you, meteors that rain from the sky, a grappling hook, a decoy, and so on. These would be cool by themselves, but Slime Heroes’ neatest trick is that you can combine skills to give them new properties. You can soup up any skill by attaching it to itself, provided you have two copies of it, but the real fun starts when you combine two totally different skills. Attach a tornado to your projectile, for instance, and you shoot a tornado. Add a projectile to your slime’s breath attack and you shoot a series of geysers. My personal favorite was adding the meteor skill to the familiar skill, which spawned about a dozen or so homicidal butterflies that attack by throwing themselves at enemies. It’s great, as is the whole skill system.

You’ve got all the tools you need, and Slime Heroes is good about making sure the enemies you’ll fight are interesting. Each new area has its own unique goo monsters that you’ll have to handle differently. Regular enemies aren’t too challenging; you’ll need to be smart with groups, but the real challenge comes from larger, stronger enemies that are sequestered off the main path and the bosses you’ll fight. These guys can take you out in a couple hits, so you’ll have to be careful. Equipping the right hat can mean the difference between life and being a (very cute) puddle on the floor that spells out the word “ouch.” Even when these fights get challenging, though, they always feel fair, and in the case of the major bosses, are a lot of fun.

It's a slime's world

This is a Souls-like, so killing enemies drops shards that you can redeem with your monkey mentor to level up speed, magic (the strength of your skills), strength, and energy, but that’s not the only way to progress. There are also several dungeons scattered across each area. Some are combat gauntlets while others are a mix of puzzle-solving and platforming (your slime is pretty agile, and can float) that will require you to make use of specific skills like your breath attack to move blocks. I enjoyed every one I did, and moreover, doing them teaches you how things work. I had come across those blocks in the world before, but I didn’t know what to do with them until after I ran into one of those dungeons. And even then, my co-op partner and I still discovered you could move them by dashing into them.

Slime Heroes is full of moments like that, where something clicks and suddenly you understand how to deal with that attack or access an area you couldn’t get and you’re running halfway across the map because now you gotta know what’s there. I also like how every aspect of Slime Heroes tells a story. As you navigate an area, you’ll find statues of one of the Guardians. Interacting with them will tell you part of the Guardian’s story, and I found myself hunting down the ones I missed because I wanted to understand their stories a little better. Similarly, defeating the corruption doesn’t just get rid of an enemy; it frees one of the critters that were corrupted. Free enough of them and head to that group’s village, and they’ll give you a reward. It’s a small touch, but a nice one. Being a hero isn’t just about defeating corruption; it’s about reclaiming the world. 

I realize that I’ve gassed Slime Heroes up pretty hard up to this point, but now comes the “but.” First, as much as I love Slime Heroes’ environments, I don’t think they all work. I dig the forest you start on and the frozen area you come across a little later, as an example, but the Fire Mountain? Not as much of a fan, largely because you’re traversing lava and falling into it (or any water) kills you immediately, which can put you back a ways, and while Slime Heroes has cool environments, traversing them isn’t always as precise as I’d like. Being set back so far is irritating when you’re just trying to get to the next area or backtrack to a specific place. Annoying? Yeah. Minor? Pretty much.

It's dangerous to go with friends (right now)

What’s not minor are Slime Heroes’ technical issues, especially in online co-op. If you’re the host, things work fine. If you’re not… oh, boy. It’s rough, folks. The list is long. Sometimes it doesn’t track the buddies you’ve saved properly. Sometimes environmental changes don’t register properly. That door? It looks like it’s still there, but you can walk through it. Sometimes players won’t see each other’s spell effects. Once, we turned in some tablets you grab from some of the challenge dungeons (get four, get an additional heart, Zelda-style) and my partner got two even though he shouldn’t have. Once, he got stuck and had to leave the game and rejoin. There were several times where he picked up an ability and just… didn’t get it. The list goes on. It got to the point that my co-op partner got so frustrated that they eventually just wished me luck and tapped out.

When Slime Heroes’ co-op works, it’s excellent. It does make the game easier, but there are difficulty sliders that you can tweak if you want more challenge, and it’s fun to solve things together. It just doesn’t often work. And that sucks, because it’s how Slime Heroes wants to be played. I hope Pancake Games fixes these, and I’ll be actively tracking their progress, but until then, it’s very difficult to recommend online co-op play unless you and your co-op partner are very, very patient. Even solo play isn’t perfect; if you have a lot of enemies or projectiles on-screen, Slime Heroes starts to chug, even though my rig obliterates its recommended requirements. I’ve had entire sections fail to load properly, too. It’s not great, y’all

I want to be clear: despite all of the technical issues Slime Heroes has, I think it’s a good game if you’re playing alone. I have high hopes for the co-op once it’s fixed. It’s charming and cute and playing with the spell system is a good time, and it has the ebb and flow of combat that makes Souls-likes fun. If you’re looking for a kinder, gentler Souls-like, Slime Heroes is the game for you. It just feels unfinished. I hope Pancake Games gets to fix it, because this is a hero’s journey you should be able to take together because… y’know, that’s kind of the point. Nobody saves the world alone.

This review is based on a PC code provided by the publisher. Slime Heroes releases on Steam on March 6th, 2025.

Will Borger

Contributing Editor

Will Borger is a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer and essayist who has been covering games since 2013. His fiction and essays have appeared in YourTango, Veteran Life, Marathon Literary Review, Purple Wall Stories, and Abergavenny Small Press. His games writing has also appeared at IGN, TechRadar, Into the Spine, Lifebar, PCGamesN, The Loadout, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his wife and dreams of owning a dog. You can find him on X @bywillborger.