
The player must buy and upgrade various enclosures to house their collected slimes and farms for storing their food.

They can only store a limited number of items and item types at a time and must go back to their ranch to unload their collected items before being able to collect more. The player moves the character around a variety of environments and can collect slimes, food items, and plorts by sucking them up with their vacuum tool (called a "Vacpack", a portmanteau of vacuum and backpack). The game's main economical aspect revolves around feeding slimes the appropriate food items so that they produce "plorts", which can then be sold in exchange for Newbucks, which are used to purchase upgrades to the rancher's equipment or farm buildings.

Slimes are gelatinous living organisms of various sizes and characteristics. The player controls a character named Beatrix LeBeau, a rancher who moves to a planet far from Earth called the Far Far Range to live the life of a " slime rancher", which consists of constructing her ranch and exploring the world of the Far Far Range in order to collect, raise, feed, and breed slimes. The game is played in an open world and from a first-person perspective. In-game screenshot showing the VacPack nozzle, a few "Pink" slimes, and a "plort" (lower-left)
