CONTRARY to speculation that the game would be average in quality and the “Pokemon with guns” gimmick would not catch on, Palworld has debuted to overwhelming reception on Xbox and PC.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), developer Pocketpair announced on Jan 20 that Palworld had exceeded two million in sales within 24 hours of its launch.
The achievement squarely places the game in the Steam platform’s top 10 all-time biggest games in terms of concurrent players. At the time of writing, the game ranks higher than Baldur’s Gate 3, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto V, with 850,000 concurrent players.
Due to the extreme number of players surpassing Pocketpair’s expectations, Palworld initially had a slight hiccup with its connectivity that the developer quickly resolved.
The launch also brought fervent discourse over Palworld’s similarity with Pokemon, particularly the design of the monsters, along with accusations — without concrete proof — that the developers used artificial intelligence (AI) to generate the monsters’ designs.
An action-survival game, and beyond the Pokemon character design similarities, Palworld combines elements from survival games like Ark and Rust, along with the base management from Fortnite.
Pocketpair’s parody of the Pokemon games also allows players to capture the “Pal monsters”, using them to not only battle other monsters but also use them for manual labour and traversal.
“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,” reads the game’s description on Steam.
“Want to build a pyramid? Put an army of Pals on the job. Do not worry — there are no labour laws for Pals,” another reads.
