So far in 2024 there have been very few video game releases. But one game has been making huge waves of both the cultural and legal variety. This game is Palworld, one of the biggest game on steam as of writing with over a million downloads on steam and a huge active player base.
The premise of this game is simple. Find a Pal, beat it up, capture it with a Pal Ball, and then either make it work for you for entirety or make it engage in ruthless combat against other Pals. This gameplay loop is incredibly similar to that of the hit Nintendo franchise Pokémon and this was intentional by the developers. Pokémon has been generally considered a non innovative franchise, meaning that they rarely if ever try and truly new gameplay ideas, and this has lead to some game enthusiasts to claim, “There hasn’t been a new Pokémon game since the first few.”
While others don’t seem to mind the seeming lack of new ideas from Nintendo. Palworld set out to scratch the itch of both of these players. It uses the the art style and memorable ideas such using a ball to catch your creatures to give die hard Pokémon fans a good jumping off point into Palworld’s more non Pokémon mechanics, such as the ability to craft weapons such as crossbows, swords, and even firearms and give them to your Pals to use in combat. As well Palworld completely throws out the archaic combat system of turn based battles (a type of combat style where both players take turns picking moves until one player is defeated) for a more real time action and first person shooter approach. This gameplay style has proven to be much more enjoyable by current gamers in the past few years and is certainly a factor in Palworld’s success.
However not everything is smooth sailing for this up and coming game. The development team Pocketpair has been under fire by the wider world with accusations from using AI art to blatantly stealing and tracing over Pokémon’s in game models. Nintendo has already made a statement that they shall be investigating the game for potential plagiarism. If these accusations are unfounded, then Palworld shall continue to soar in popularity which will demand an increase of quality from Nintendo. All in all Palworld is a big step forward for the monster catching/taming genre regardless if succeeds or fails.
