“Palworld is now one of only seven games that have seen over 1 million concurrent players on Steam – the others include: PUBG (3.2 mil), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1.8 mil), Counter-Strike 2 (1.4 mil), Lost Ark (1.3 mil), Dota 2 (1.2 mil), and Cyberpunk 2077 (1 mil).”
This game gives me weird vibes. The studio already had 2 other games in early access before this one, both of which are seemingly abandoned or at a standstill development wise. The gameplay itself just kind of looks like a generic base building game but with Pokémon and guns. Most of the steam reviews are just making jokes about the knockoff elements, guns, animal cruelty, etc.
I honestly can’t tell if this game is actually good or if it’s just a brief trend.
I’ve played it on PC Game Pass, and IMO, it’s mostly shock and hype. After a short while, it becomes the same thing over and over. Capture or kill a lot of pals to level up and improve your strength. Then do it again on new pals for more strength. The base stuff changes a little, but it’s still basically the same.
This feels like new world and lost ark all over again. Huge hype while twitch bounties are up and then the player base will tank. Hopefully I’m wrong since it’s always nice to see small dev companies win.
Don’t worry, the devs have already won if the sales numbers are any indication.
As far as winning the larger gaming community’s opinion, I think that will depend on how they handle updates and bug fixes for the game going forwards. As an example, the dedicated servers have a massive glitch that causes you to lose all your progress and it’s hard to tell what causes it. Personally, how they respond to that bug (or bugs of similar magnitude) is my litmus test for whether this game will stand the test of time or not.
When you boil down any game like that, they don’t sound very fun. It’s about the experience as a whole.
I guess I should put it in perspective by saying I like Clicker (incremental) games. The good ones, anyhow. Yeah, every game is a loop of the same general thing. It’s how to you iterate on that thing as the player progresses that makes it good or bad. There isn’t enough change here as the level goes up.
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I see 2 games, Overdungeon (which seems finished or at least out of EA with positive review scores) and Craftopia which is still receiving updates and was also pretty well reviewed until people started giving it bad ones when palworld released.
I haven’t tried it yet but it seems like a more polished Ark and that game is a massive hit despite the developers being just outright terrible.
They released a patch for craftopia Monday, Jan 2024, the then 3 patches in December and at least one a month before that. I wouldn’t call it abandoned.
It’s amazing. I’m loving the game.