Palworld has taken the gaming world by storm, and rightfully so! This single and multiplayer game features an expansive open-world, that lets you craft, collect, and “befriend” mysterious creatures known as “Pals”.

Palworld has gone on record for selling 5 million copies during the first three days of its early access debut, as well as reaching over 2 million players on Steam, making it the second-highest played game of all time on said platform.

That’s a pretty big deal for this action-adventure/survival hybrid.

The game was revealed on June of 2021, and it is now confirmed that I have been living under a rock because I hadn’t heard of it until Niko told me about it a few weeks ago.

It was finally released on January 19th, 2024 through Steam, and was also available on Xbox Game Pass. Freakin’ sweet! Makes me miss my Xbox! 😭

The game had a lot of controversial reviews, due to the wackiness of having the Pals use guns, as well as how comically dark the process was to collect the Pals. (Spoiler: You beat them on the head, Caveman style.)
A lot of the negative reviews, however, were due to the likeness to another monster-taming game you may have heard of, known as Pokémon. While this latter part may be somewhat true… Palworld offers SOOOO much more.

As soon as you finish the simple World and Character Creation, you awaken on an island, as a little Lamball, Chikipi, and Cattiva look over your dazed self. (These three Pals are staples, so pay some respects!) As you gain consciousness, they quickly scurry into what is the wild unknown, which is now your new home… that you must survive!

As mentioned earlier, you are able to craft items that will help with your survival and success throughout the game. The game’s objective is pretty simple: You survive, build your base, collect Pals, survive, build up your base, collect more Pals, and so on. But it’s how you go about it that makes it such a tremendous and fun game. I personally am fond of crafting and designing, so I definitely have been focusing on harvesting and crafting materials in order to improve the Base and to help me level up.

The lore isn’t exactly explained upfront, as the game encourages you to explore to find it, or rather, to be a part of it in my opinion. The premise, however, is pretty much about surviving and navigating through the unknown, and to co-exist alongside Pals. Throughout the game, there are little journal entries scattered from other “castaways”, and these give insight into the types of Pals and NPC enemies you may encounter.

The game mechanics are pretty simple and easy to grasp, but they do provide a lot of information if you are not versed in the world of survival games. The tutorial is also simple, engaging, and didn’t want to make me throw my PC against the wall, so yay for that! 🎉

The main things to keep a focus on are:

• hunger levels
• health gauge
• weapons

Right away, you’ll want to gather as many berries as you can to stave of death by hunger, and collect wood and stone in order to craft a torch and an axe and pickaxe, again, to stave off death by freezing. Night will soon come, and until you gather the resources to make better clothes, fire will be your friend.

My first Pal raid with Niko took place at night and I caught a Daedream, which is a “dark” type of Pal. I was freaking stoked because she was sparkly, cool AF, and I was just vibin’ with DaeDae, okay? I crafted a necklace for her which lets her hangs out with me all the time! It’s like having 2 Pals out at a time since she also attacks when I am attacking or when I am attacked.

Other favorite Pals so far are Foxsparks, Pengullet, Vixy, Cremis, Jolthog Cryst, Katress, and good ol’ Depresso to name a few. I am still a n00b, so I will go more in depth regarding Pals in another article once I really get my feet wet!

I usually don’t like solo gameplay, so I am surprised I actually don’t mind playing solo here! I jump to my world, Chimera Isles, when Niko isn’t able to play. It’s more of a relaxing game versus when I am playing with Niko on our private server.

I freaking love the multiplayer facet of this game though! Niko and I are in a guild, and so far we have two Bases and are currently scouting for our third. We go out hunting for Ore and Coal, which are needed to craft some sick muskets and shotguns. I am very partial to the crossbow, but I do love my new firearm that Niko created! I definitely have no qualms to use them against the Syndicate Thugs to protect my Pals.

As far as Mechanics go, they have a good map system, and you can even place markers in case you ever want to revisit anything in particular. And did I mention, the map is freaking huge! All kinds of environments are sprawled through out it, from tropical, to artic, and they even have an autumn season sprinkled in. My Fave! 💖

The Lifmunk Effigies are little glowing green statues in the shape of a Lifmunk that will boost your capture rate, and they are EVERYWHERE! Night time is definitely Lifmunk time up in our house, yo. These effigies, however, were causing a raucous as they were doing the opposite of what they were supposed to at one point, and made it harder to capture Pals. But the creators released a patch to fix the issue, so we do not be wary of the effigies and can continue to be on the lookout for them!

The replay value is definitely there, and they have so much room for expansion. It’s bonkers thinking of all of the cool stuff they can add on!! There are so many caves and little nooks to explore throughout. There are also so many paths to take in this game, such as becoming a master Pal tamer, or master crafter, etc. There is no way all of these people claiming to be “done and over with the game” ACTUALLY explored everything the game has to offer.

That being said, I would love to see underwater caves, with the ability to have an oxygen tank to explore the waters. I also think it would be great if you could expand the Base circumference as you level up. Other things that I would like to see, such as adding more items to decorate your base with, and expanding on the home budling mechanics, but honestly, the game is hella playable even without these things.

Keep in mind – The game is still in Beta!!! Therefore, it can only improve on an already solid and kickass foundation.

The next Pal World update intends to crack down on hackers, which I am all for that. To me, this game is about having fun and exploring the the island…. Where is the fun in getting to the max level??? What’s the endgame here, my dude?

Anyway, I am hoping alongside of that update, they will throw something fun for the rest of us good people that are having a blast. In the mean time, I will continue to fancy up my base and level up my character by collecting more Pals and exploring what is out there. With there currently being 133 Pals, there are still SOOO many more Pals that I haven’t even come across yet.

And hey, everyone needs a Pal, am I right?