Palworld: The (Not) Pokemon Survival Game That’s Only as Unhinged as You Are

When Palworld released about a month ago, I was fairly interested. Neither survival games or Pokemon have ever been great interests of mine in video games, but given all the discussion around the game I figured I should check out.

Palworld is an open world survival game where you explore an island and collect Pals. Pals are cute creatures that have a variety of skills and traits that they can use in battle or around your bases. The defining feature that I notice is how the Pals are capable of carrying out activities in your base with little guidance from the player. For example, I can go off and explore the world and I know that when I come back, my Pals will have produced and moved all sorts of useful materials. However, sometimes the Pals can prioritize different tasks weirdly. You can manually assign a Pal to a task, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. For example, while trying to use a crusher to turn wood into fiber, I repeatedly threw my Pengullet at the crusher and the game would say he was assigned to it, but then he’d immediately wander off and start watering my berry bushes. The game is in early access so some jank can be expected, but other than the occasional frustration like that, the game runs just fine.

What drew me most to Palworld were the YouTube videos, Xbox reviews, and stories that described the most unhinged and bizarre moments in the game imaginable. After sinking a little time into the game and establishing my first impressions, I can say with confidence that Palworld is only as unhinged as you want it to be. If you want to make a sweatshop run by exclusively by cat creatures that will work themselves to death, you can. If you want to build a gulag where slackers are quarantined and starve to death, you can. If you want to build a functional base with a wide variety of Pals that all have food, beds, and relaxation areas, you can. You can also catch human NPCs in Palspheres, but they don’t do anything. Therein lies the beauty of Palworld. It’s a sandbox survival game that you can play however you want. You can slaughter and subjugate just as easily as choosing to live and coexist with the Pals. Both are totally valid ways to play the game.

The other defining characteristic of the game is its inclusion of guns and the ability to give guns to Pals. The marketing and screenshots for the game emphasize this feature. The title screen even shows Grizzbolt, the Pikachu/Electabuzz looking Pal, wielding a minigun. Guns are locked behind technology, and in my meager playtime I have yet to reach those tiers in the technology tree. The technology tree is what allows you to build different items ranging from clothing to weapons to ammo to beds to the different resource production equipment that the Pals can work on. You gain access to new tiers as you level up, and you spend technology points to unlock the ability to craft the item in question. It’s a fairly simple and straightforward system. Some upgrades require ancient technology points, which you get from bosses. Some Pals also have a unique skill that you can access by crafting a certain item. For example, once I catch a Grizzbolt, I can then purchase a technology upgrade that allows me to build a minigun for him to use.

There are over 100 Pals to fight and capture. The game features dungeons (which I have yet to attempt due to my character level and the time limit on when they disappear), free-roaming world bosses (which I have fought and even captured), and Pal trainer tower boss battles. The tower bosses serve as the game’s story beats. There isn’t much of a story, but Palword isn’t the kind of game that needs a sprawling campaign.

I have enjoyed my time with Palworld. Even though the game is in early access, it feels great. There’s a lot to do and I haven’t encountered any game breaking bugs or glitches. My only issues so far are with some tasks in your base not being prioritized at all. Palworld also has online co-op, so you can build bases and create armies of Pals with friends. It’s a good time that I would highly recommend. The game isn’t terribly expensive either, and it offers a lot of content and replayabilty for its reasonable price tag, especially when compared with other video games getting released nowadays. Overall, Palworld definitely lives up to its hype and I can see why it became an overnight sensation.