I have around 16 hours played, and so far it has been pleasant. I really like the clever mix of genres that works really well together, and the game is pretty chill to play.

It still has some issues, namely AI pathfinding bugs or non-customizable controls, but other that that I didn't really encounter any serious problems.

Also, I've been digging into the team behind it, to see whether it's just a soulless cash grab by some random company, and it turned out that it's actually a pretty wholesome story and it's kind of a miracle that the game even exists.

PocketPair started as a three man studio, passionate about game development, that couldn't find an investor for their previous games even though they've had really fleshed out prototypes, to the point where they just said "Game business sucks, we'll make it and release it on our own terms", and started working on games without any investor.

They couldn't hire professionals due to budget constraints. The guy responsible for the animations was a random 20-yo guy they found on Twitter, where he was posting his gun reload animations he self-learned to do and was doing for fun, while working as a store clerk few cities over.

They had no prior game development experience, and the first senior engineer, and first member of the team who actually was a professional game developer, was someone who randomly contacted them due to liking Craftopia. But he didn't have experience with Unity, only Unreal, so they just said mid-development "Ok, we'll just throw away all we have so far, and we'll switch to Unreal - if you're willing to be a lead engineer, and will teach us Unreal from scratch as we go."

They had no budget. They literally said "Figuring out budget is too much additional work, and we want to focus on our game. Our budget plan is "as long as our account isn't zero, and if it reaches zero, we can always just borrow more money, so we don't need a budget".

For major part of the development, they had no idea you can rig models and share animations between them, and were doing everything manually for each of the model, until someone new came to the team and said "Hey, you know there's an easier way??"

It's a miracle this game even exists as it is, and the developer team sound like someone really passionate about what they are doing, even against all the odds.

This game is definitely not some kind of cheap cash-grab, trying to milk money by copying someone else's IP, and they really don't deserve all the hate they are receiving for it. But I also don't deny that their inspiration with Pokemon is too much at some places, and I hope they will address that in the future.

There's also one relevant quote from the article, said by the developer himself:

Although Pal World is a very interesting game, I would like to add one point: it is not at all suitable for players who prefer single-player games and want to enjoy the story, so please be aware of that.

There's almost no story, so those people won't enjoy it.

Fans of survival craft genres such as Minecraft and Valheim will enjoy this game."

The killer feature for you as a survival game is allowing your monsters to do work for you. It really cuts out the tedium that a lot of other survival games like valheim suffer from.

I don't usually go with new games. I tend to wait a few weeks or a month first for the hype to die down, see the reviews and wait for big bugs to be squashed, but really fancied the look of this one. Tried it, and I'm pleasantly surprised with how cohesive and smooth it is. I'm told it's quite like Ark: Survival Evolved (which I bought but never played) but without painful taming mechanics. Gave it a spin, and getting so much fun. Looking forward to my next time playing it.

About 5 hours in after finding it on gamepass. Its enjoyable, mind you I've just been upgrading my base and exploring to find new pals. There is a bit of a grind as is typical with these games to unlock everything. Would I pay more than $30 for this at this time? No, but for what is there it is quite enjoyable. Either wait for it to go on sale, wait for more features, or play if with gamepass.

As another user pointed out, it feels like My Time at Portia or it's sequal My Time at SandRock

It's closer to Ark featuring Pokemon than just Pokemon with guns. It's a survival crafting game that adds cute animals that can work and fight for you.

It sort of feels like the best of both worlds, but from my 5 hours of play, it feels a pretty shallow. Ark has you explore the island and evade dangerous predators. It has you find hidden artifacts and fight bosses with an army of dinos. Palworld's world is pretty but sparse (though less than the latest Pokemon game,) I don't think I've encountered anything actively aggressive towards me except for weak humans, and the boss battles feel like very toned-down Souls bosses.

I don't generally care for survival games, but I've got something like 23.5 hours played in the past 3 days for Palworld.

I enjoy survival games. First played Minecraft, I enjoy Empyrion, put a few hours a week into Valheim. I started Conan Exiles, but found out about the slavery aspect after stumbling upon the options in the game. I thought that was distasteful, but I enjoyed the other aspects of the game.

In Palworld, can you still progress through the game without enslaving and working these creatures to death? In Pokemon, you travel around with your buddies, and you form connections with your team. From what I'm hearing about Palworld is you have minions who you exploit.

Is it an option to play the game with that companion feel of Pokemon, where my monster buddies are helping me out for the benefit of us all? Versus just using monsters for my own benefit? I want to play the game, but I'm not going to get any enjoyment out of taskmastery and buggery.

I am enjoying it. We haven't hit any game breaking bugs yet but the netcode could do with a polish, playing on a server 300ms away has odd interaction.

The game gives me more Ark vibes than Pokemon, but I haven't played any of them since the gba gen1 remakes.

I've played it, but don't get a lot of time during the week to dive into new games. I really like it. It's fun and doesn't seem focused on just catching animals.

I see the charm of it but the survival aspect seems a little basic to me and as a result I haven't bought it yet. I got a bit of a "My Time At Portia" vibe. But I'd be happy to stand corrected.

My preference goes to either survival with some kind of automation or increasingly complex mechanics (eg Factorio) or those that requires actual survival and mastery of it's systems that make building your first base rewarding (lately I found out about and have been absolutely addicted to Vintage Story, before that it was Haven and Hearth)