Catching Strays: Palworld vs. Pokémon
By Ethen Butt
The monster-catching genre is full of wonderful games and has been steadily growing for many years. But in the last few weeks, a bit of controversy has popped up around two big players: the recently released Palworld and the game that dominated the genre — Pokémon. People are in arms about the similarities between the two games, but is this drama warranted?
Palworld is a survival game in the same vein as games like Ark, with a clear progression system and no definite ending. It has a level progression system for not just your pals but for your character as well. As you progress in levels you can unlock more and more crafting options; for example, going from a crossbow to a rifle. Outside of the leveling system, you can also employ your “Pals” to help around the base with things such as cooking, farming, and gathering other resources.
Pokémon has a clear story and a clear ending but much of the gameplay is reliant on that fact, with much of the playtime after completing the story dedicated to finishing the Pokédex or finding shiny Pokémon. In recent games, they have added more methods of encouraging people to keep playing, such as catching events in games, and DLC. But it is in the design choices of Palworld that people are finding issues. Given that there are over 1025 total Pokémon at the time of writing this article, they have even started reusing models with some slight variation, such as Wiglett and Toedscool. So, in a genre that has had a steady flow of games, how likely is it to have some similar designs?
Some people online have taken the models and stripped them bare to show how close some of these designs are.
With all these similarities, why has the Pokemon company not done anything? The “Pals” that have some design similarities to Pokemon are rather few, with almost all being completely unique. A lot of uproar was made online with several people attempting to convince others that the game was a shameless copy. But in the game, there are maybe about ten designs that people are in arms about. There are 137 Pals total in the game found in a variety of different ways, such as a dungeon experience or found in breeding.
In the end, it is really up to you: do you think there are too many that look close, or do the engaging mechanics and multitude of interesting and unique Pals make this a whole other entity from the Pokemon franchise? Even with the slight controversy, Palworld has still sold over 19 million copies of the game. What’s your opinion?
