Palworld

 Team Rocket has made some dark changes in direction lately...

They're locked in a cages during the night and released only to work the production lines in the day. Bending and weaving shapeless metal into deadly firearms on a ceaseless conveyer belt of arms and death, driven by the knowledge that should they ever falter in their daily required numbers, if their wardens should ever find them wanting, their next duties would be getting strapped to a table having pieces cut out of them. What is this I describe? Some ghoulish prison camp run by the worst of the worst? Actually it's my best guess at what I can see from the daily goings-ons in the indie Pokémon-style game which recently flaunted its wings; Palworld. Yes, you read that right. Those battered and bereaved? They're Pokémon-like creatures. No, I have no idea what kind of weird dreams have to be running through your mind in order to even conceive of an idea like that, but I can't lie and say I'm not fascinated to learn more. Even if that's morbidly so.

Palworld is a proposition by Pocketpair who seem to be an indie studio with a penchant for making these grand and unfocused mismatch products that throw everything at the dart board in order to see what hits it's mark. It's an admirable approach to the development process for those that can pull it off, even if it typically suffers from your age old 'jack of all trades master of none' conundrum. Independent games have a licence to veer off wildly exploring any avenue that catches their fancy, or stick their fingers in whatever pies they happen to stumble on, and that can be as much of an developmental  exploration to witness as a user as it can be for the creatives behind the lines of code. Craftopia is one such example of this, as their last game to be inundated with all these hunting, farming, base building elements standing as a backbone for the detritus of their whirlwind imaginations. Who knows where a new project by these minds could end up?

Now it is important to say that Palworld is coming later this year and likely in an early access state, which mirrors the state that Craftopia launched in back in 2020 and very much still is in. Now that's red flag number one when it comes to indie products, starting the next project before you finish the last one, however apparently the team at Pocketpair do have a separate studio working on that last game before they move onto their next. (Or at least they say that they do. Whether or not you believe such a proposition is your own provocation) But if you're willing to accept a brand new Pokemon-style game featuring monsters (or 'Pals' as their called here) firing guns and fending off slavers, then do I have the trailer for you and your hyper-specific preferences!

From all I can tell Palworld's trailer presents an adorable and colourful openworld buzzing with cheery delight and some genuinely cool and/or sweet looking 3D monster sprites. It's not as easy as it may seem to create brand new monsters to the quality of what the Pokemon devs do (That is, on their good days. Even Gamefreak get lazy sometimes and just slap a face on a pile of actual garbage.) but the Palworld developers are certainly knocking at their door with some of their characters, although there's also some of that oversized teddy-bear vibe from Doraemon in some of these designs too. If I'd have to criticize the designs it would only be for the fact that right now I can only see them in relation to their probable inspirations than for their standalone merits as their own property. A distinction that veers on problematic for some designs in the recently released trailer.

The player inhabits this open 3D world as a 3rd person explorer armed with nothing but an eye for adventure and their cadre of Pal followers. (And an M16, of course.) Much of the exploration of this world takes obvious cues from, go figure, Breath of the Wild and similar free exploration games, but mixed with a Flimstones-style utilisation of creatures that we've always wanted from a proper Pokemon game. I'm talking gliding with flying monsters, building large structures with small and long-necked monsters serving as manual labour and even using big bodied, and hopefully sturdy, monsters as bullet shields against gun-toting hunters. Oh, and then there's the Monster who shoots explosive eggs out of it's rear end. He's pretty cool too.

I have to say, whilst there's undeniable hint of independent mania implied by the scatter-gun approach to themes and concepts in this premise, sometimes the presentation alone seems to elevate the trailer to something more than the sum of it's parts. That shot alone of the player riding a flying stingray Kyogre look-alike into a gorgeous sky citadel balanced on various mountain tops is absolutely magical, and gives me hope that the ambition of the game can carry this title a little more into the mainstream than Craftopia ever was. Marry that with the expressive open world, solid design work, and pretty engine, and I think there really might be something special amidst all the weird and wacky. A vindication for developers who I suspect have been told their ideas are a little too hairbrained one too many times in the past.

However in order to get to that point there is a matter of plagiarism I want to touch on, because beside the premise (which I think is fair-game; reiterating on an established premise is how we push our mediums forward) there are a few creature designs that hit a little too close to other recognisable figures. On the lower end we've got the female protagonist of this trailer who reminded me of some one for the longest time until I finally placed her and now I can't unsee it. That's Aloy, isn't it? They nicked Aloy's outfit and stuck it on a girl with different hair so we wouldn't notice. Well I did! Oh, and there's the Kyogre look alike. I know, this new guy as a halo, but come on- that is so Kyogre. And then at the end of the trailer, in the Pal showdown scene which looks beat-for-beat like the reveal trailer of Pokemon Unity, that is literally Zoroark. They gave him new hands and rubbed off the eye-paint, but that is close enough to raise a lawyers eyebrow. The team might want to work on differentiating their designs up. Just a little.

I'm happy to see another potential Pokemon competitor step up to the plate, even if this one bought a machine gun instead of a bat. Game Freak have been in the midst of a reimaging campaign for their flagship series, and it's pressure of these competitors which is driving that innovation. If this game manages to convince the Pokemon series to throw in stealth action elements, we might be on track for the legendary Metal Gear Pokemon crossover game that both franchises were born to do! Or at the very least we might one day get a truly packed RPG Pokemon game with enough weighty kick to it that it lasts longer than a single year in the public eye. If Bethesda can do it year after year than why can't Gamefreak? And if they won't, then Palworld will because everything I've seen from this game is that it has heart. It's a diseased and misplaced heart, but it's beating. That's got to count for something.