I would seem that Palworld is officially a hit. Not only has he game, which is still in early access, already sold over 5 million units, but it has apparantly taken the all-time number two spot for concurrent players. As of this writing, Palworld hit an all-time high of 1,121,226 simultaneous playes as reported by Steam itself. Talk about coming from out of absolute nowhere!

For those unaware, Palworld, made by Pocket Pair is gaming’s latest early-access darling. As for what it is exactly, that’s both kind of difficult and fairly easy to explain. In the simplest of terms, it’s like Pokemon Legends: Arceus. You can explore a massive world populated by creatures that look quite a bit like Pokemon, capture them, and use them for battles and such. Only, it doesn’t stop there.

Players can capture whatever (and whoever) they want using Palworld’s pokeball analogs and then use their newly-captured, uh, assets for whatever they want. You can make ’em fight; you can put them to work gathering resources; you can build a factory then put them to work in that factory to turn resources into items you can sell. Does that all sound like too much work? No problem, you can just take a butcher knife and carve up your “pals” for resources. There’s also guns and gunfights for battling against the stronger creatures and those directing them.

As one might expect, this mix of odd features and cute characters gives Palworld an incredible amount of comedic potential, and the internet has wasted no time on capitalizing on it. Does this make Palworld good? Not necessarily, but then maybe it doesn’t have to be all that good mechanically if players are enjoying themselves regardless. I for one don’t begrudge Palworld its success, but I’m kind of hoping that there won’t be the usual tidal wave of copycats trying to get their own slice of it.

As for actually playing it…I’m not sure I will. I’m not really a fan of open-world stuff to begin with, and I kind of lost interest anything resembling Pokemon a long time ago. Maybe I’ll give it a shot someday and find that it’s 100% worth all the hype. For now though, I’m happy just watching from the sidelines.

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What’s your take on Palworld? Are you going to dive in too or have you already?

Image from the Palworld Steam page