Wtf is "Palworld" and why the fuck can't people shut up about it?

Latest indie darling blow up videogame fad that you'll hear less of in a month or so. I say that somewhat derisively but I think it's pretty normal, Lethal Company was the last one and that was a neat little horror co-op game imo.

I think the reason word of mouth is spreading so much can be attributed to two things:

It's somewhat edgy, misanthropic and subversive take on Pokemon/Nintendo's family friendly aesthetics. I can't say much about this as I haven't played the game myself to judge just exactly how much is being played straight and how much is satire (and I don't plan to), but I'd guess people who grew up with Pokemon as a franchise have been looking for that edgy take and are reacting to that, and the resulting controversy is driving the engagement algorithms (I mean just look at hexbear lmao), and
it's fulfilling a niche that Nintendo hasn't by being an online multiplayer Pokemon-esque game that's not turn-based; just judging based on some of the clips I've seen but working together with your friends to catch a high level Pokemon-alike actually does look kinda fun. This one's really on Game Freak for allowing Pokemon to go stale by playing it safe and not innovating the game design at all, so Palworld coming in to steal Nintendo's lunch money here's pretty deserved, I think. (Although yeah, I guess Ark did it first but the cartoony character designs are doing a lot of heavy lifting in making the on-screen action legible).

They played up the edgelord stuff in the advertising, the game itself really isn't that edgy. If I hadn't seen all the attempts at selling it via edge I would assume that all the edgy content in the game is just poor translations.
- Nah the edgy content is there. The game tells you some of the monsters are weak and only good for food, and that there are "no labor laws for pals". It's just that it doesn't go all the way and make these things horrifying like a lot of "commentary" games do, it's just a pokemon/survival game with edgy subtext and guns.
make some kind of point how the hundreds of millions of people playing Pokemon apparently think cockfighting is okay because they played a video game about cartoon monsters fighting each other.
Goadstool, you’re the best, but nobody thinks this or is genuinely arguing it
I don’t think they’re trying to make a point about anything lol. They’re just making a game about being a Pokémon warlord because they think it’s epic

I wanted Pokemon with guns. What I got was yet another unfinished "survival" game with a legally distinct coat of paint.

- The same way I felt about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom... and I beat them both!
  I was being glib though. I wasn't interested in the guns so much as I was factory automation with not-Pokemon.

Honestly, it's very early. It's one of the most feature complete early access games I have played in a long time.

It has similar survival aspects compared to Ark, valheim, and Conan. Building is not punishing with reasonable material requirements. You assign pals to your base, and they perform actions based on their available skills (mining, logging, handiwork, planting, watering, etc) and their passive traits (randomly assigned modifiers). You can keep a party of 6 with you, including one that can be out walking along as a companion. Some can be mounted, some can be used for extra oomf in combat, some will guide you to resources.

There are dungeons around the map that have bosses and loot, as well as some more elusive pals.

It's a bit like Satisfactory in that you setup resource nodes and your outpost will generate those and allow you create things from it. There are a lot of pals to find apparently, as I continue to find new ones while exploring. There are boss battles, sometimes you'll find a camp of syndicate guys (poachers) and free their captive pal from a cage to obtain it.

Idk man, I'm having a blast playing it. It's very forgiving for a survival game, and reasonably easy to manage your base. Resources are plentiful, gameplay loop is pretty solid, and exploration is fun.

Where it will go from here, considering this is the first public build of an early access title, idk. But it has a really good foundation.

It’s what gamefreak have refused to do and it’s good.

E: oh yeah, there’s a bunch of absolute freaks going nuts on twitter trying to prove that the developer used ai to make assets from nintendos ip. If you’ve got any experience with 3d modeling or llm/gpt it’s very funny to scroll through. Primo “fifth grader lawyer” time.

Yeah, looking at these designs, yeah, they're fake pokemon, but clearly designed by a person. Weird how people seem to think artists have vanished since AI popped into existence, and that lazy or derivative art has ceased to exist. (Not that I think the art is lazy, the designs are very cute, and if they were trying to avoid making their creatures look like pokemon, they would basically have to throw out 90% of appealing art design in the process. I don't blame them for leaning in on the "discount pokemon" angle at all.)
- There’s a very funny interview translation going around where the lead dev or whatever is asked “what is your creative vision” and replies “I don’t have a creative vision, I just want to make fun games”
  It’s gonna take some serious icj convincting the idf of genocide level proof to not just see the dev and games success as our last gasp of wholesome %100.

uhh it's outside of hexbear too.
unlike cats, which should not be outside.
- unlike cats, which should not be outside.
  if the people whinging about how wind turbines kill birds really cared about birds, they would advocate to ban all cats, which kill way more birds than wind turbines ever will

Ark survival evolved and factorio but its pokemon crafting survival game but a very rough unreal engine game that looks like an nft game.

I tried it on gamepass, its definitely a video game. No idea why its talked about so much.

32 people on steam, 4-player co-op on xbox

It's pretty fun, if you almost liked Ark survival evolved and like pokemon you'd probably enjoy it.

Is it wrong to automate my rock stacking if I use water type ~~Pokémon~~ pals?

It's fun :)

I'm just happy it's not related to frenworld

Kinda mid but theres potential there i guess

it's a joke that got taken too far. it's the free market functioning as it should. it's Pokemon With Guns. it's probably not actually a video game. buy it today!

IDK why we even need a pokemon clone, as there are already 100s of pokemon games and they're all literally the same.

I like the look of it, but I won't judge as someone who got sick of seeing BG3 everywhere for months. I like D&D enough that I've played some AD&D, but it's possible to have too much of a good thing for sure.

Pokemon is factually one of the largest franchises on earth.

Palworld is possibly a loving parody that addresses at least in part every criticism people have ever had about pokemon so it is fascinating to see it in the wild.

We must protect the copyright holders! How dare they use generative AI to make new pokemon!

Defending against generative ai is less about copyright holders and more about advocating for and protecting fellow workers in creative industries from being dropped for that lazy shit. The corporations are fine either way, as always it’s the workers who are left holding the bag
Did they use AI to make the game? The art looks lazy but not like AI.
- The issue is their CEO previously posted about how AI could be used to skirt copyright, and that he couldn't tell which were legit pokemon or AI generated ones anymore due to how far the technology has come.
  They hired a concept designer for their monsters, though it's not clear if the designer used AI to generate concept art to then redraw. At the moment it's all speculation with no hard evidence of wrongdoing.
  Outside of the CEO saying these things publicly, and the company's previous title that was based on AI image generation, there is nothing to say that these monsters were designed with AI.

It's less edgy pokemon and more just open world pokemon. The vast majority of the edgy stuff are just things that appeared in the pokemon games but you weren't allowed to do yourself.

We had Pokémon that had fought in wars and a genetically altered Pokémon that killed the scientists trying to control it the very first game.