We've been writing about Palworld for a couple of years, but soon we'll be able to play its unusual combination of Pokémon-like creature taming with machinegun combat. There's a new trailer below that reveals it'll launch in early access in January 2024.
As Palworld trailers go, this is pretty tame (pun intended), given that previous trailers seemed to suggest you could put your not-Poké pals to work in a sweatshop to produce guns for you. The trailer above only hints a little at its crafting or management aspects in favour of focusing on the cute pals and the shooty combat, such as a shot of what look like Wooloo manning what look like military gun turrets.
Palworld is the work of Pocket Pair, Japanese developers who are also responsible for the similarly ambitious early access mash-up Craftopia and the similarly over-the-top Overdungeon. Pocket Pair recently returned to updating the latter after getting the rights back from their publisher.
Honestly, it's easy to make too much of how odd PalWorld seems. It's not like Pokémon itself, with its ten-year-olds who leave home to seek a career as professional cockfight trainers, isn't weird already. (Plus, if you're a parent, there's a decent chance that you're already interacting with knock-off Pokéstuff by buying unofficial toys and cards from eBay, so...). I'm looking forward to giving Palworld a chance.
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