After growing up playing Pokémon, I will jump at the chance to try pretty much anything that involves some form of monster collection. It's just my jam and Palworld looks and sounds kind of hilarious that I need to play it.
It's basically taking the initial idea of Pokémon and expanding it with guns, farming, survival, building and apparently quite a lot more. It's actually sprinkling in game mechanics from all sorts of popular games. Even if a bit janky, which I expect since it will be in Early Access on January 19th, it's quite likely to be the next big thing.
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Game Features:
- Survival
- In a harsh environment where food is scarce and vicious poachers roam, danger waits around every corner. To survive, you must tread carefully and make difficult choices...even if that means eating your own Pals when the time comes.
- Mounts & Exploration
- Pals can be mounted to traverse the land, sea and sky—allowing you to traverse all kinds of environment as you explore the world.
- Building Structures
- Want to build a pyramid? Put an army of Pals on the job. Don't worry; there are no labor laws for Pals.
- Production
- Make use of Pals and their skills to make fire, generate electricity, or mine ore so that you can live a life of comfort.
- Farming
- Some Pals are good at planting seeds, while others are skilled at watering or harvesting crops. Work together with your Pals to create an idyllic farmstead.
- Factories & Automation
- Letting Pals do the work is the key to automation. Build a factory, place a Pal in it, and they'll keep working as long as they're fed—until they're dead, that is.
- Dungeon Exploration
- With Pals on your side you can tackle even the most dangerous areas. When the time comes, you might have to sacrifice one to save your skin. They'll protect your life—even if it costs their own.
- Breeding & Genetics
- Breed a Pal and it will inherit the characteristics of its parents. Combine rare pals to create the strongest Pal of them all!
- Poaching & Crime
- Endangered Pals live in wildlife sanctuaries. Sneak in and capture rare Pals to get rich quick! It's not a crime if you don't get caught, after all.
- Multiplayer
- Multiplayer is supported, so invite a friend and go on an adventure together! And of course you can battle your friends and trade Pals, too.
I'll be testing this one out on Steam Deck and my Kubuntu Linux desktop with Steam Play Proton for sure, so expect a report on how it runs some time shortly after release. The game is made with Unreal Engine 5, so it will be real interesting to see how the Steam Deck handles it, although graphically it doesn't look too demanding but graphics and style are of course only one part of the performance puzzle. Stay tuned.
You can find it on Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Ah, interesting, I didn't know it was an actual game.
I had come across the listing, and thought it was satire, especially with the poaching and slavery bits.
Good on them for making an actual game. I just hope it's actual satire and don't take themselves too seriously. The description reads promising on that bit, at least.
Last edited by MayeulC on 10 Jan 2024 at 11:25 am UTC
I had come across the listing, and thought it was satire, especially with the poaching and slavery bits.
Good on them for making an actual game. I just hope it's actual satire and don't take themselves too seriously. The description reads promising on that bit, at least.
Last edited by MayeulC on 10 Jan 2024 at 11:25 am UTC
0 Likes
Mountain Man 10 Jan 2024
I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't hit the developer with a cease and desist.
3 Likes, Who?
Linux_Rocks 10 Jan 2024
Palworld just makes me think of PAL territories. :P
3 Likes, Who?
We'll see if it's a playable game. From what I've heard, their previous attempts have been janky attempts to cash in on other games' popularity, like replicating a lot of Breath of the Wild stuff (and even the splash screen) in Craftopia.
I expect this will be popular with streamers thanks to the edgy bits, at least.
I expect this will be popular with streamers thanks to the edgy bits, at least.
3 Likes, Who?
Arehandoro 10 Jan 2024
I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't hit the developer with a cease and desist.
I suspect one of the reasons for them releasing the game first in Early Access is to vibe check potential copyright infringements from Nintendo.
0 Likes
That big yellow thing looks like someone crossed Pikachu with Totoro and gave it an attitude.
1 Likes, Who?
All of these look like someone asked some AI tool for "Pokemon, but make it different enough to avoid getting sued".
2 Likes, Who?
I mean, I have more faith in this than I ever did in The Day Before. I won't be preordering it or anything (I've been playing more than enough Pokemon as it is of late), but I'm excited to see this take on the monster collecting genre.
0 Likes
It always strikes me as odd whenever there’s a monster catcher, people immediately wonder about Nintendo. You can’t own the entire concept. This comes up every time. Unless they literally rip Pokemon directly, it’s just another game.
2 Likes, Who?
pleasereadthemanual 11 Jan 2024
It always strikes me as odd whenever there’s a monster catcher, people immediately wonder about Nintendo. You can’t own the entire concept. This comes up every time. Unless they literally rip Pokemon directly, it’s just another game.I think the concept is fine, but some of those character designs are decidedly close to the design of some Pokemon. I don't know if it's close enough to count as copyright infringement.
2 Likes, Who?
It always strikes me as odd whenever there’s a monster catcher, people immediately wonder about Nintendo. You can’t own the entire concept. This comes up every time. Unless they literally rip Pokemon directly, it’s just another game.Though Pokemon certainly popularised it, there's also the fact that Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc. actually didn't create that genre in the first place - you want the collective of Dragon Quest V (Super Famicom, 1992), Megami Tensei (Famicom, 1987), and Robotrek (SNES, 1994) for that!
(And yes, there was a Bomberman entry in that genre.
)Last edited by Pengling on 11 Jan 2024 at 6:02 am UTC
4 Likes, Who?
It always strikes me as odd whenever there’s a monster catcher, people immediately wonder about Nintendo.
Me too and it doesn't happend with any other games/genre. When another "put 3 of the same together" game is released I don't read people saying to wait for the cease and desist from Taito. Some people think that the monster training genre belongs to Nintendo/Pokemon Company and they didn't even invented it.
0 Likes
It always strikes me as odd whenever there’s a monster catcher, people immediately wonder about Nintendo. You can’t own the entire concept. This comes up every time. Unless they literally rip Pokemon directly, it’s just another game.Though Pokemon certainly popularised it, there's also the fact that Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc. actually didn't create that genre in the first place - you want the collective of Dragon Quest V (Super Famicom, 1992), Megami Tensei (Famicom, 1987), and Robotrek (SNES, 1994) for that!
(And yes, there was a Bomberman entry in that genre.
And even those titles were basically Eastern takes of Wizardry IV, the granddaddy of the moncolle games. It's memetic how SMT and Persona to this day are referred to as Pokemon clones even though they predate the IP and are more mechanically complex, a consequence of limited reference pools.
We'll see if it's a playable game. From what I've heard, their previous attempts have been janky attempts to cash in on other games' popularity, like replicating a lot of Breath of the Wild stuff (and even the splash screen) in Craftopia.
I expect this will be popular with streamers thanks to the edgy bits, at least.
Most likely, survival looter and basebuilding games are a dime a dozen on Steam and usually almost never go well, and this pitch just adds a flair of "big franchise you recognize but legally distinct" to stand out in the glut of Steam submissions. It has the same flair of "Superman bad" media flying about these days. There's also the Unreal third-person shooter template aspect which should be a red flag that the monster companions are mostly going to be an afterthought mechanic-wise.
People keep rewarding cynically referencing other intellectual property as a way to draw eyeballs and it'll keep happening until they wise up.
2 Likes, Who?
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