Hey gamers, brace yourselves for the masterpiece we’ve all been waiting for (or maybe not) – Palworld, where survival, strategy, and a dash of Pokémon come together for an experience that’s, well, let’s just say, eclectic.

Pocketpair has come up with a new open world survival game that seems bring some of the best aspects of many games together. The game is called Palworld and it follows a shipwreck survivor who gets stranded on an island filled strange new creatures called Pals. The player can use special containers to capture these pals after which you can use them to do your bidding.

Each of these palls has their own specific abilities such as breathing fire and having massive sharp horns to cut things with. These pals can be put to tasks such as chopping wood, starting  a fire or you even use them to fight. One of the initial goals in the beginning of the game is surviving and using your pals to create supply lines and automate production as much as possible.

As you get more resources from around the map you will be able to build more advanced structures and tools. You will have to traverse this world carefully and you will encounter many different types of environments such as forests, desserts, mountains and more. The world is dotted with mysterious structures and there are different factions some of which mean to harm you.

You will be able to explore this world alone or together with your friends because the game has co-op multiplayer options with up to 32 people. Although couch co-op will not be possible. Palworld seems to take influences from different games such as Pokémon in how the Pals look, operate and how you catch them in specialized containers.

Actually, there has been some controversy around this because many consider the Pals to look way to similar to Pokémons and some claim that the game is a copycat. Even the players in the game are called trainers which sounds almost the same as being a Pokémon trainer. However this game is clearly more dark than Pokémon as you can actually kill and even eat the Pals if you want to. The game gets even weirder because you will have to ability to use guns and other modern tools to kill those palls and also other people.

The game also seems to take notes from open world survival games such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the way you move around and craft items and food. When asked where the inspiration for the game came from, the CEO of Pocket Pair Takuro Mizobe stated that the idea came from the company’s other game called Craftopia.

In this game the automation systems consist of machinery and he basically wanted to replace that machinery with living creatures which in this case are the pals. Takuro is also a fan of the games Ark: Survival Evolved and Rim world of which the similarities are very clear. He wants the game to be “a unique blend of real-time-strategy, monster collector, and third-person shooter.”

The game is set release into early access today (January 19^th) on Steam, Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. Early access meaning of course that the game is not an it is being released with the intention of getting feedback from players. However judging from what we have seen of until now it looks relatively developed for this stage. 

Palworld is set to immerse us in a vast open world steeped and mystery and crazy creatures. The game is above all incredibly unique in the way it combines different aspects from different games and genres. Now, here’s the burning question: Is Palworld doing too much? Is it a gourmet dish or just a hot mess of borrowed ideas? Dive into the madness on Steam in early access today and decide if Palworld is the survival masterpiece we never knew we needed.