A new survival game called Palworld released last week and it has been very unexpectedly successful. It’s a game that’s been two years in the making, having a trailer uploaded on IGN on May 24, 2022. Palworld is an open-world survival crafting game where you can make a base and capture creatures known as “Pals”. These Pals have a variety of different uses, such as helping you craft items, gathering resources for you, producing resources in general, and cooking food. There are also Pals that are good for fighting which is useful for boss encounters and towers which is a place you can go to fight a boss in a closed area. One thing that nobody expected is the addition of being able to equip these Pals with guns, greatly increasing their combat effectiveness. People have compared it to being a Pokemon ripoff, which is understandable, but incorrect. It has reached over 1 million current players on steam as of January 23, the 2nd highest of paid games. It sold over 30 million copies in under 2 days just on the first day of release.
Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates Palworld for the great game it is. Nintendo fans have actually sent death threats to the developers. The developers have openly stated that they will just be ignoring these messages. Another thing the developers have said is that they’re not afraid of legal issues with Nintendo at all, stating that they have cleared legal reviews and that there’s been no action taken by other companies. Takuro Mizobe (CEO of the company behind Palword) has said that “in his personal opinion, Palworld is not at all that similar to Pokemon”.
Palworld developers have already released a roadmap containing what they plan on adding to the game in future updates such as bug fixes, new Pals, and more.
The developers made this game with no prior experience to making video games before and even hired a 20 year old man who worked at a convenience store that also had no experience making games. The man ended up becoming one of the “Ace” developers of the team, playing a huge role in the creation of Palworld.
It is truly surprising that a game with developers like these is more successful than multi-billion dollar companies who just put out the same thing every year.
