Palworld

In Palworld, players control a customizable avatar from a third-person perspective and explore the open-world Palpagos Islands. Players must manage their hunger level, craft basic tools, gather materials, and build bases that act as fast travel points. Unlocks through a technology tree allow the player to craft and use weapons, structures, and decorations.

The islands are inhabited by 287 different types of creatures called Pals, which players directly engage in combat with to weaken and then capture using a variety of different tiers of "Pal Spheres". Pals can also be bought on the black market or through merchants through non-player characters or traded with other players, with the black market providing rarer Pals for higher Gold Coin prices. After obtaining Pals, they can be summoned to battle or stationed at bases to assist with tasks such as scavenging, crafting, and cooking depending on their type. Each Pal has a Partner Skill, allowing further utility by using them as weapons or mounts. However, not all Partner Skills are unlocked upon catching a Pal, and must instead be obtained through the crafting of equipment that permanently unlocks the Partner Skill.

The game opens with the player character washing up on a shore of the Palpagos Islands, where they find a damaged tablet instructing them to pursue the Towers and the World Tree. After the tablet is fixed by a fellow survivor, the player character ventures to a nearby village where they are told by the village's chief about the World Tree and that the de facto leader of the Rayne Syndicate, Zoe Rayne, likely has knowledge of it and the history of the Palpagos Islands. However, Zoe attacks the player character when they enter her Tower, though she is defeated and drops a mysterious device known as a Key Sphere. The player character then learns from both the village chief and Zoe that Key Spheres are held by each of the Towers' faction leaders, and that they are important to reaching the World Tree.

The player character then travels across the Palpagos Islands, defeating each of the Towers' faction leaders and claiming their Key Spheres. Along the way, the player also learns about the Calamity, an apocalyptic event that wiped out the ancient civilization that once inhabited the Palpagos Islands in a single night. After defeating Auri, the leader of the Azure Covenant faction, she informs the player about how the creature that brought about the Calamity was sealed away inside the World Tree, though it has been steadily draining the tree's life essence since its imprisonment. To prevent the creature from growing strong enough to escape, Auri tells the player character to venture into the World Tree with the help of the legendary Pal Panthalus and defeat the creature to save the Palpagos Islands.

Palworld is developed and published by Pocketpair, an independent and doujin soft company based in Shinagawa, Tokyo. It was their second early access open world survival project, following Craftopia. Like it, it uses gameplay mechanics reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but has added creature-collecting mechanics popularized by the Pokémon franchise. Pocketpair said that Pokémon was not one of their main inspirations.

According to CEO Takuro Mizobe, the concept of Palworld is based on Ark: Survival Evolved, which also had monster companions in dinosaurs; the survival mechanics and in-game tasks were inspired by Rust. RimWorld was also cited as a major inspiration for the game.

The game's reveal trailer was met with high engagement on social media and mixed reception, ranging from excitement to disgust. The phrase "Pokémon with guns" was commonly used to refer to the game by both players and journalists. Some viewers thought that the game was fake, a sentiment that surprised the development team. It also received some skepticism due to the unfinished state of the developer's earlier work, Craftopia.

The satirical tone of promotional material, with references to labor laws and illegal hunting, sparked interest in the game exploring the dark undertones of the creature-collecting genre. In Brazil, the game's publicity was boosted due to the pronunciation of pal being similar to pau in Portuguese. Pau can mean 'wood' but is also sexual slang for penis. Both players and journalists made various puns when discussing the game and the Pals due to this double meaning.