The survival game genre has always been a style that appeals to a more specific audience, after all, they are difficult games in which you are presented with few tutorials, almost no story and you have to learn everything yourself, with many deaths and frustrations on your back.

Palworld has managed to attract enough attention and accessibility to appeal to both fans of the genre and people who have never played the style.

A great mix of games that worked

Let’s just say what comes to mind for anyone who sees a video or photo of Palworld: yes, this game has many similarities with other famous games such as Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Ark: Survival Evolved/Ascended, and yes, this unlikely mix somehow works, and very well.

Survival games have always been more of a sandbox, rather than a story-driven game. Here you do what you want in any order and the world is yours to enjoy.

In Palworld, you start by creating your character and then being woken up by three cute little monsters on the beach and a message about the towers and the tree. After that, you’re free and the game begins. There are some tutorials with missions, which personally do a good job of guiding a newcomer through the survival system without getting in the way of the gameplay.

The big difference here lies in the possibility of capturing the world’s creatures, called Pals, each one unique in its functionality and with random passive abilities, some of which are better workers, others fighters, or even negative traits, there may be a cowardly Pal who has a negative attribute because of this it’s interesting to capture several to decide where each one will be best distributed.

The gameplay here is simple and similar to other survival games, such as Ark: Survival Evolved/Ascended or Conan Exiles, where the player has to keep an eye on his Health points, his hunger and the weather, with clothes for cold and heat biomes, for example.

Also focusing on building a base to protect himself from raids and having to keep his little monsters working on new equipment and generating resources.

Combat is in third person and in real time, where you can use the captured Pal to fight together with you. You can only fight with one active monsters at a time, but you can change them at any time, making it a fast and fun game to play.

You can fight with melee weapons, but the game is more focused on using long-range weapons, starting with a bow and going up to a rifle or a bazooka, for example.

Exploration captures the player and the audience

Palworld’s map is very large and there are so many things to discover, so many creatures to face and capture, a streamer broadcasting the game to their channel will have no shortage of new things to show, as well as several funny situations that can happen during the adventure, making for a live stream that’s easy to do and fun to follow.

This is a game that you can have a lot of fun playing alone, but if you play with friends all those moments will certainly be even better. I covered this game live with four players and there were several moments when both we and the audience were having a great time.

The player limit between friends is currently four players, but on an open or dedicated server, the limit is increased to 32. If you’re someone who can create a private server, especially for a live stream, it’s possible to have a world where you can get a lot of your audience to play with you.

The future of Palworld holds great promise

As an early access title, the game isn’t finished, but there’s already plenty of content available in its current version, with the ability to build automated bases, more than 111 creatures available to capture, bosses to fight on the map, as well as five very strong trainers for players looking for a challenge.

Pocketpair, the company responsible for the game, has released information about the future of the title, which broke records in terms of players and sales in its first week, to the surprise of many. The future will include new Pals, new bosses, islands, PVP mode and, of course, gameplay improvements and bug removals.

With all these promises, it’s hard not to get excited about the game and all its potential. Whether the company will be able to meet these expectations, only the future will tell.

Differences between Palworld on PC, Xbox and Steam Deck

Tested on its Steam version, Palworld ran well, with a few minor bugs. There were a few crashes that forced me to close the game and open it again, but nothing that interfered with saving the game or playing it. Being an early access title, this is to be expected, but I also hope that in its final version, these problems will be resolved.

On Xbox consoles, Palworld has been released directly into the Game Pass catalog, but the differences between the Xbox version, even if installed on a computer, and the Steam version are quite obvious.

There are many bugs in the Xbox version, from the start of the game, when some menu items aren’t available, but Pocketpair is already working on fixes, having recently published the first of them.

On Steam Deck, the issue is a little different. While it is still up to date with the Steam store, gameplay on the Deck is a little more compromised due to constant crashes after a few minutes of play, requiring a hard reset of the Valve console to get back into the game.

It is not yet known whether this problem is a matter of the Steam Deck hardware or the Palworld software. In any case, this problem is only present in the Pocketpair game, while in other, theoretically heavier titles, Valve’s portable console offers good performance.

Updates to resolve this issue, whether for the Steam Deck system or Palworld, are eagerly awaited by players.

Palworld is currently available in a total of 11 languages, making it very accessible to the majority of streamers.

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