Palworld’s success is partially born from Pokémon fans’ discontent

polygon.com:

Palworld is a massive success, celebrating an astonishing 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam. In a highly competitive market flooded with quality games, it can be difficult to predict which games will succeed and which will vanish off the radar. Palworld’s selling pitch of “Pokémon with guns,” combined with survival game elements, helped propel it to the top. But there’s another factor in Palworld’s success, and it’s fan frustration at the stagnation of the Pokémon franchise.

The Pokémon RPGs are often criticized for being the same game over and over again, with only slight adjustments to the formula and more Pokémon to catch. This isn’t entirely true — Pokémon Legends: Arceus was a big open-world experiment, allowing the player to take some agency back from their team of Pokémon. Pokémon Scarlet and Violetbuilt off of that foundation, expanding the open world and introducing the well-received Terastallization battle mechanic.

But it can feel like for every step forward, there are two steps back. Scarlet and Violet struggled with graphics issues, including frame drops. Accumulating a collection of Pokémon across generations is still difficult, even with the addition of the Pokémon Home service. Older fans in particular have been asking for more adult themes or complex factors to deal with in Pokémon games, but Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have largely remained stalwart in maintaining the kid-friendly tone of the games.

Palworld wasn’t built to satisfy those fan demands, but it does hold a certain intrigue for players. There will never be a Pokémon game that goes to the lengths of Palworld, where the player can set their Pals to work in horrible factory conditions to mass-produce guns. But it’s almost like a glimpse into an alternate reality, where the Pokémon franchise could get weird, experimental, and unafraid to release entries aimed only at adults.

But Palworld is not just “Pokémon with guns.” In addition to riffing on Pokémon, Palworld is liberally