That means the Pals will be handy companions in battle – so long as they don’t rebel – and we’ve already seen Pals be grabbed as a living shield, willingly offer themselves up as cover, and both manufacture and fire machine guns in the footage released of the game so far. But if no one observed it, it’s going to be no problem at all.” It’s similar to the police system in Grand Theft Auto. That makes the world chase you like you’re a criminal. “This could be changed in the future,” Mizobe admits, “but our current idea is that if other NPCs see you kill a Pal, they will put a bounty on you. But perhaps the most interesting inspiration comes about whenever you are spotted killing a Pal – an illegal act in Palworld – by another NPC. We hope not to have hard limitations on the activities of the players.”Īs well as Ark and Minecraft, Mizobe says that Dragon Quest was a huge influence on the overall designs of each Pal. But similar to Minecraft, even though the areas are unlocked by the progress of the players, we don’t want to stop them from doing what they want to do. “You’re going to unlock area by area throughout the open world region. From a narrative point of view, Pocketpair says it hasn’t fully established how progression will work in the game, but it wants the world to be wide open for exploration as early in the game as possible “There will be a slow paced story,” Mizobe says. Mizobe adds that Rust was a huge inspiration when it came to the survival mechanics, and how Palworld could offer its players freedom as well as providing them with clear tasks and a purpose. So you have to craft in the game, and you can build every object with the Pal. In Palworld, we want every element of the world to involve the Pals, the monsters, so that they would be the focus and you can create strong bonds. In Ark, there’s a concept of survival with a monster, or with a dinosaur, but we feel they’re less involved. “Ark is a very awesome game, but we feel it lacked some elements we wanted to play with. “The concept of Palworld is based on the great game Ark: Survival Evolved,” Mizobe says. That said, Pocketpair is not shy in using other games as inspiration – Pokemon just doesn’t happen to be one of them. Many games have colourful creatures alongside humans, and as well as the guns, Palworld is a survival game built on exploration and endurance rather than battling to be the very best like no one ever was. At the same time, you can understand Pocketpair’s confusion. There are more than a few similarities across the designs too, with one Pal looking like a Mareep crossed with a Whimsicott, another that looks like Lycanroc meets Galarian Zigzagoon, and a third with a passing resemblance to Gyarados. It’s understandable that comparisons between Palworld and Pokemon have been made – both games feature a range of animal-like creatures that wander around the world ready for players to interact with, train, and fight alongside.

Palworld meme