I was meant to post my second article on here days ago, but I was playing Palworld. I was meant to finish editing and proofreading my third post on here, but I was thinking about playing Palworld. So fuck whatever those dumbass posts were meant to be about and let’s talk about Palworld. But also please go read those dumbass posts when I eventually get around to publishing them please. I said please twice.
The internet has been set alight since this game came out and I love it, it at one point had taken over Counterstrike’s peak concurrent players on steam. Insane numbers for a game still in early access. Honestly at first, I couldn’t see the hype; I hadn’t seen any gameplay really but from what I could glean from promotional artwork was that it’s a shameless Pokémon clone but with guns, not great I thought, but definitely not worthy of all the buzz around it and I completely dismissed it as a janky looking asset flip for quick cash. Then when I realised I could play it without paying for it (game pass not piracy(although I’m not against piracy)) I thought fuck it why not? And holy shit you lot, this game is just stupid mindless fun. I’m already a slut for a buildy buildy, crafty crafty game so they got me there and then add real time Pokémon mechanics and my legs are wide open.
It’s basically a mix between Ark, borrowing heavily from their crafting and inventory system, they’ve replaced the dinosaurs with Pokémon, sorry Pals, that have various elemental types, and different skills that you can put to use helping you build your base and craft things. Also there’s guns. Strangely the guns are kind of an afterthought, as there is so much taken from other games and it feels like it shouldn’t work at all but it kind of does? My favourite part about it is its pseudo commentary on Pokémon itself and the cruelty of making cute little critters box each other to exhaustion. Palworld is so shameless in its display of exploitation of Pals that I kinda respect it, they’re not like Nintendo hiding behind words like ‘fainted’ when they get beat beyond consciousness.
In Palworld your Pals can get tired of working conditions and refuse to work all the way to straight up fracturing their limbs and all this needs to be managed by you, the slave master, sorry Pal master. I feel as if the developers had an improv development style where any idea was accepted followed by ‘yes, and?’. We got a lil sprinkle of Elden Ring with the evergaols, Breath of the Wild with the glider and the climbing mechanics, all wrapped up in a cheap, generic-looking art style that looks so wrong but feels so right. Half the internet right now are yelling about how it looks bad and cheap and therefore it is but I’m on the half that claims it’s just raw, unadulterated fun. No loot boxes, no battle pass, no psychoanalytic tactics to keep player engagement high and metrics looking good, just you and the gang frolicking in a field and enslaving every cool looking creature you find together, which is what games are meant to be. I’m not saying it doesn’t look cheap because it definitely does or that it can’t be tedious but if, like me, you’ve been waiting for a Pokémon game that you can play in real time that’s not dogshit like Pokémon Arceus, then it’s worth a punt. Either way I think it’s really funny that this shitty looking game with ripped off Pokémon designs and ripped off Ark assets has got the whole internet in a headlock like this. Also it has guns.
It’s early days though and the next few weeks/months will be crucial, the dev team have shared a road map that, if executed correctly, could keep this game moving from strength to strength and keep the Pal train in full motion. Or it could just turn out to be flavour of the month BS and in a few weeks we’re talking about Paedophile Simulator and no I’m not gonna google whether that already exists or not, I don’t want to be put on some kind of government watch list.
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