In my game of the year, you arm cute Pokémon with machine guns before letting them toil cold-heartedly in the mines

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Many people are looking forward to Diablo 4, Assassin’s Creed and Co. But the game that our author Mark Sellner is probably looking forward to the most this year is called Palworld (Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series). And it thrives on you catching (Pokémon-like) monsters, arming them, and letting them work for you.

What makes Palworld special? What’s even cooler than Pikachu? If your answer to this question is also, quite naturally, “Pikachu with a machine gun”, then Palworld could also be your game of the year 2023. But let’s start from the beginning.

Palworld is an open-world survival game that seeks to take and refine the virtues of Pokémon. So basically you roam through the colorfully designed world and catch the so-called pals.

This works like in the mental model, in which you first weaken them in battle and then throw a “Sphere”. It then wobbles three times and the Pokémon Pal is trapped. However, the battles themselves do not take place in rounds or instances, but simply in real time in the open world.

You can then use other pals to actually fight, but also fists, baseball bats, bow and arrows, pistols, assault rifles, rocket launchers and much more. Here at the latest it becomes clear: Palworld wants to be more than just a Pokémon clone.

Who writes here? Mark Sellner is an MMORPG author at MeinMMO and has spent many thousands of hours in various Opel World Games. One of his favorites has always been the Pokémon franchise. In Palworld he sees a successful alternative to the proven game principle and beyond.

In a first tutorial, the developers also show you in the video how you can capture the little monsters:

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Lots of gameplay options

What are the core features? Apart from the unusual way of capturing the little companions, you can also do a lot with them in Palworld. The game offers you practical options, such as riding and flying on different pals, but also macabre ideas.

You can arm your buddies and have them fight for you, send them to work in mines and factories, breed them to create new pals, or even eat them when push comes to shove.

“Slaughtering pals”, catching endangered pals or other methods that are too malicious are prohibited under the in-game law, according to the developers. But you say yourself, only a few sentences later: “It’s not illegal if nobody sees it” and probably want to tickle your moral gray area a bit.

In gameplay, the whole thing should then break down into 9 core features, which look like this:

  • survival – In the world of Palworld, there are vicious pals, nasty people, and harsh conditions. Among other things, the weather and hunger should bother you. This is where the mechanism comes into play that you can eat your pals in an emergency.
  • exploration – By harnessing the skills of different pals, you can fly, swim, ride, and even dig underground.
  • base building – Palworld should bring an extensive construction system, where you can create all sorts of different constructions. Your sweet little animals are hard at work on your construction site. The developers kindly point out that there are no occupational safety laws for Pals.
  • Life – All in all, your long-term goal should be to live a quiet life with your pals and get really comfortable.
    • In your factory, the poor little fellows have to toil
  • farming – Yes, you can build your own farm here. Different pals should master skills like sowing seeds or watering the flowers. Some of the colleagues should even be able to clone themselves if you implant them.
  • automation – Once your base is in place, including farm and factories, you can start automating work processes. To do this, simply place pals in your facilities. According to the developer, “They will work forever as long as you feed them.”
  • dungeons – Dungeons should become an integral part and one of the places where you can expect challenging fights. Various boss opponents are also waiting for you, which will demand a lot from you and your pals.
  • breeding and crossing – In a separate menu, you can hatch pals, similar to Pokémon. However, you can mix very different monsters together in Palworld in order to create the strongest pals.
  • poaching and crime – There are sanctuaries in the world of Palworld that are home to endangered pals. Here it is illegal to catch them. But if you don’t care and don’t get caught, you can make a lot of money doing it.

    • By the way, you can do all this together with your friends, because Palworld can be played completely in multiplayer. How many people can be on the road together is currently not known.

    Current trailer for Palworld:

    Survival game on Steam mixes Pokémon and shooter – Reminiscent of well-known pocket monsters with its creatures

    More videos

    The bad Pokemon is partly to blame for my love for Palworld

    Why is Palworld my Game of the Year? “As a fan of crimson and crimson, this just hurts,” said our Pokémon expert Max Handwerk when I rubbed his nose in the first in-game trailer for Palworld. And he’s right. Because with the obvious template that Palworld uses, it already makes it clear what it can do better.

    Although Palworld is not tied to a switch, but appears for PC and Xbox, it is in a completely different league in terms of graphics and performance. The world appears lively, colorful and authentic. I couldn’t feel any of that in the last Pokémon attempts, which is of course sad on the one hand, but also puts me in a very positive mood for Palworld. But of course that’s not all.

    I like the step that Palworld goes further than its paragon in spirit. The game gives me so many opportunities to do exciting things and it doesn’t end when I’ve caught all the pals and defeated all the arenas. Instead, I can build my base, automate it and continue to tinker with many corners.

    I also believe that it will be really good because Palworld does not come from completely unknown developers. The Japanese development studio Pocket Pair is behind the project. They have been active since 2015 and have released the successful multiplayer survival game Craftopia, among other things.

    Craftopia mixed Zelda with Diablo and it did a great job. It was released into Early Access in September 2020, which is where it remains to this day. Still, 82% of Steam’s 14,000+ reviews are positive, showing that Pocket Pair knows how to make open world, crafting, and base building really good.

    I’m looking forward to Palworld because it’s something completely different. While the game doesn’t reinvent any of its gameplay mechanics and certainly stole most of its ideas from somewhere, it mixes them together so well that something entirely new emerges. Something that definitely has what it takes to be my game of the year.

    By the way, Palworld doesn’t have a release date yet. On Steam there is only a note that the game should be released in 2023. MeinMMO will of course keep you up to date on this.

    What do you think of Palworld? Do you celebrate the concept behind the game as much as I do, or do you find the wild foray into your moral gray area a little too tasteless? Write it to us in the comments.

    By the way, my game of last year was Lost Ark, and in this article I’ll tell you why.

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