I know as much about programming video game monsters as I do about the exact flavor and consistency of Martian sand, but I’ve always thought the main advantage of the slime monster archetype was its economy. In most games, slime is a squashed smiley face. You could grow slime right now by drawing a circle in MS Paint and squinting your eyes. Slime do They take on more complex forms, like chrome slime, fire slime, and angry eyebrow slime, but this isn’t on the same level as Lara Croft’s hair rebooting with a grenade recoil.
The simplicity of slime creation may soon be a distant memory. But Asher Zhu, a technical artist at Epic Games and now at Duck Shake Games, is hard at work remaking Dragon Quest’s mundane sludge balls into a technical masterpiece that rivals his previous contribution to Unreal Engine showcase Matrix Awakens. That’s the impression I got from the video below of Zhu’s latest project, anyway. The description even includes talk of “Splatoon mechanics in dungeons,” which is intriguing.
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According to details on Chu’s LinkedIn, Chu worked at Epic for about five and a half years as a technical artist working on R&D projects including Fortnite and the aforementioned Matrix demo, before becoming director of DuckShake Games (which had two employees at the time of writing) in April 2024.
That seems to have been a big focus on fluid physics, and that expertise certainly comes in handy with the slime game, which Zhu began developing during his time at Unreal Engine maker (you can picture him poking around in a drawer full of neon-colored slime between shifts on Fortnite).
He recently resumed [the project] “New fluid solver allows for true(?) slime movement and slime spawning.” Slime spawning! You can see it in the video. When you hit a slime against something, it splits into multiple adorable mini-slime pieces that rush back to the central mass, like chicks rushing back to their mother hen, but are absorbed into a gelatinous mass on contact. Apparently, you can also force-eject some of the slime tissue to double jump. Words cannot describe the behavior of slimes. Words cannot describe it, but it’s amazing.
The game surrounding slime is as fluid as the slime itself. It feels like Zhu is just having fun with the prototype at this stage, but previous videos have teased a fantasy RPG depicting everyday life, where you can manipulate slime and other objects with a clawed hand cursor. Slime can be doused in a bathtub to regain mass on a summer’s day, launched like a rubber band, or “thrown” at an elven wizard using a frying pan. Aside from a scene in which 11 wizards die in painful corrosion, Zhu’s WIP footage is full of quirky elements, such as slime swallowing and carbonated soda cans. Oh, oh, oh, I want more of this. Thank you.
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This nooze article is a cheeky, sparkly, unfiltered ball of enthusiasm, but let me drop a couple of contextual mushy words at the end. First, real-life slime molds are all the rage among experimental artists, especially those working across recent shades of posthumanism and environmental critique that engage with labor politics. Here’s an article about one particular artist residency that looks at slime mold growth as a model of networked resilience within a community. Second, Mushroom 11 and Earthtongue are still the best slime simulations in my opinion, but sadly, neither of them can spit anything out of a frying pan. Do you have a favorite slime simulator? Probably one that was born out of one of your many slime game jams. I’d love to hear it.
