![]() ![]() Sure, the graphics are uninspired, features are missing, and the bugs are plentiful. None of the parts are as good as the games they’re pilfered from, but they don’t fall apart in practice - as games with far greater budgets and aspirations frequently do. The creature-management aspect was pioneered by Pokémon, of course, and refined in games like Cassette Beasts and Monster Sanctuary.īut when the game released into Steam’s Early Access (and Xbox Game Pass, albeit in a less playable form), players expecting to find a trash fire akin to recent rug-pull The Day Before were surprised to find, if not a masterpiece by any estimation, a surprisingly cohesive and fun game with an addictive and propulsive loop. Automating your base and production is a staple since the likes of Factorio and Timberborn. Climbing and gliding are lifted from Breath of the Wild. The gameplay systems of the survival exploration genre will be familiar to anyone who has played previous viral hits Valheim and V Rising. Seemingly every aspect of the game is lifted wholesale from another. All the while you steadily climb a tech tree, going from stone axe to metal spear to crossbow to assault rifle. Leave a few Lamballs and Cattivas chopping wood, mining, and tending the berry plantation while you and your Eikthyr deer roam the island, mowing down low-level Pals and human poachers. As you build your base, you capture and deploy Pals to act as your escorts and your workforce. The concept of the game is easily grasped: You’re exploring a mysterious island populated by Pals, which are plainly dollar-store Pokémon. But this sort of out-of-the-blue hit has become one of the primary aspirational goals of smaller developers, for whom even half a million sales would be a huge success. Truly it is the flavor of the . . . week? Month? It’s hard to say. It’s broken through to the mainstream so much that my non-gaming friends are talking about it, and one texted me while I was typing this paragraph asking if they should snag it. ![]() And whether they’re buying because they truly want it, or they want to punish Nintendo and Game Freak, or because they’re curious, or because the under-$30 price tag was too easy to justify . . . they’re buying it. What the hell is going on? The simple fact is that Palworld is what Pokémon fans have been asking for for years, or at least close enough to count. The game has sold at least 5 million copies in its first week, and hit 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam over the weekend - a feat matched only by a handful of AAA games over the years. Whatever sales Palworld’s developers, a Japanese outfit called Pocket Pair best known for a game called Craftworld, were expecting have surely been exceeded by an order of magnitude. But after its Early Access release last week, the game has broken records and sold millions - reflecting the pent-up demand for a truly modern Pokémon-type game that the franchise’s developers seem unwilling to provide. When Palworld made its inauspicious debut in a teaser a year or so back, few thought this strange, blatant Pokémon ripoff would be anything but a quickly forgotten oddity. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |