It must be galling if you worked on Cassette Beasts or one of the many other Pokémon knockoffs that bothered to create original-looking monsters to then see the success this game is having with monsters that look like those. Obviously, gameplay and marketing are different (presumably), but still.
Has there been another game that combined Pokémon and Factorio (might be a better comparison than this…but survival crafting, base building, and automation)?
LOL, Palworld just leapfrogged BG3, Hogwart’s, and New World for most concurrent users. Elden Ring next.
They could really have something here…
Atrio might fit that, although I think it’s less about the monsters.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125390/Atrio_The_Dark_Wild/
Just be aware, that its a vastly inferior version that is currently sitting in Gamepass. When I played, there was no “exit” button, the DLSS option was greyed out, controller options had no key correspondent, meaning you had to guess what to press, and, it turns out after I purchased the steam version, vastly different tech tree, and lots of other small and large QoL additions were missing. Its clearly a an older version, and even an older console version, given the no exit button on the main menu.
Yep, it went viral, and people actually playing it are being positive about it
Boggles the mind. But when I sit down and think about it, not really.
What’s really popular?
- Pokemon
- Minecraft
- Anime girls (Genshin Impact or something else?)
- Online multiplayer games with guns (Fortnight, CoD, etc)
Combine all four = Profit!
Well, there’s been a few attempts at explanation, but I think the major components are:
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There’s not many Pokemon-style games on PC. TemTem has come and gone, Cassette Beasts is mechanically good, but looks like your average 16bit-retro indie endeavour. Palworlds visuals really pop in comparison, and don’t compare unfavourably to the latest actual Pokemon releases. Which, I should mentioned, are pretty stagnant.
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It’s infinitely memeable. Pokemon with guns and edgy shit. The publisher also made quite an effort to get the word out, there’s plenty of pokedex-style short vids on youtube, and they interact with their community. For better or worse. The…overtly amorous Pal posted earlier got bumped to position 69 in the Paldex after the community suggested it would be funnier.
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It exceeded expectations. Everyone more or less expected a shitty, half-baked asset flip. As it turns out, it’s surprisingly well-made; the devs clearly took the lessons learned from Craftworld and improved upon it.
It also took Ark: Survival Evolved’s lunch money by nabbing the best parts of the mechanics, but respecting your player’s time and not actually running like dogshit and clogging up hundreds of gigs in install size. -
And yes, thanks to the efforts of countless youtube
twatscontent creators combined with the above elements, it did go viral.
I have no idea how this whole affair will look in 4 weeks from now, but folks are enjoying the game for a variety of reasons, and I got to admit, at the point where I realized that I could fly a dragon and strap a bloody missile launcher onto it, I gave in. May the Lords of Chaos have mercy upon the stained remains of my soul, I’m on a quest to ride the worlds first living F-16.
Is this MP online only, or is it like Ark and you can solo with a private/fake server?
I watched a video that stated it is Single Player, 4 Co-op with 4, and there is talk of creating Dedicated Servers for 32 players.
Sounds like they made enough to work on the dedicated servers. ; )
Edit:
Looks like the 32 player is already available as I search around.
I ran across a couple of dungeons. Did one this morning. You can definitely see the roots of the dungeons in the Craftopia dungeons - however the ones here are a lot better. There were a bunch of rooms with resources (some I hadn’t seen aboveground) and some enemies (human). Also a few Pals that I also hadn’t seen above ground. When I captured my first one the game auto-selected the green pal sphere; I guess because the Pal was harder to catch. I think you can try to use the blue spheres but your chance to capture will be a lot lower.
If you explore the dungeon to the ‘end’ you find a boss encounter. Defeating the boss gives you some special drops and also enables a treasure room at the end of the dungeon with a few chests. There’s also a crystal that allows you to teleport back to the dungeon entrance.
Here’s the vista leading to the boss area:
And here’s the post boss treasure room with crystal:
You can play solo, locally host a 4-player MP, use their official servers, or set up your own community server. Basically, the full Ark palette of options.
Also, I imagine most private server vendors are still working on support. Survival Servers, for instance, is having issues with FTP access (not everyone can get in) and their server config tool (settings not saving or not taking effect).
Also also, in addition to the usual not-enough-servers issues, the concurrent player count for this has broken Epic’s MP infra at least once already so there are issues.
Kiddo and I have over 15 hours in it already, which is probably more than the total time we’ve played any and all games together in the last year. So yay for that!
I’m playing a lot of this, but on gamepass which doesn’t crossplay with steam sadly
As above the Gamepass version is apparently 3-6mo out of date. Hopefully the Dev and MS get their shit together since this has blown up.
FYI, if you do set up a community server with a password, be prepared for a lot of frustration getting other friends to connect to it. The process to connect is to go to the Multiplayer section, click the Community Servers button and then maybe type part of the name. Then you connect. However, the server list that’s retrieved when you click the Community Servers button is not exhaustive and it may come down to luck as to whether you will see your desired server or not in the list.
While it’s true you can enter an IP/Port at the bottom of this screen, you can’t connect that way if your server has a password (because there’s no way to enter it).
My son and I watched the trailer and we could not stop laughing. It’s so blatantly a pokemon rip off, it’s hilarious.
When we saw the Pals manufacturing AR-15s on an assembly line, looking either defeated or distressed, I lost it. I was laughing til I cried.
This is American Pokemon. Unfettered capitalism, rampant environmental destruction, and the right to bear arms.
Yup. I call it “Punkemon”. ;)
I’m grateful I have no desire to play this ever. I’m up to my eyeballs in games right now.
I find it baffling that so many of these Arkalikes get such large player bases so quickly. Where does the playerbase find the time?