Count me among the uninitiated, because, if I had heard of Palworld prior to its monstrous pre-release last week, I had long since forgotten anything about it. And boy oh boy, was it ever hard to ignore. So much so that of course I had to go and grab it from the Game Pass library. And, of course, I had to at least try it out to see what the fuss was all about. TL;DR after a slow start, it was whole lots of fun!

Understand that I’m here with only a few hours of Palworld under my belt, and I remain a survival game novice, but for all the “it’s Pokémon with guns!” banter, the immediate vibe I received from Palworld was “cartoon-y Valheim + Conan Exiles.” It’s an open world, fluffy-looking survival game that just happens to be populated with Pokémon-like creatures, along with humans. After creating your human character using a simple creator (you can alter gender, hair, skin color, and some basic facial features), you wake up to three “Pals” – Chikipi, Cattiva, and Lamball – staring you down before being let loose to start surviving. As you go about your business punching trees for wood and rocks for stone, the Pals roam around as they do. The game then sets about educating you as to the ways of survival: how to craft gear, make food, and build a base. Among all this is the real kicker: capturing and “storing” Pals Pokémon-style. You have to craft “pal spheres” to capture Pals you’ve weakened (they don’t go without a fight!), and then you store them in your “palbox.” From your palbox, you can then manage your pals to help you out at your base. Each Pal has its own “job,” as it were. I so far only have a Cattiva, which mines stone, and a Lamball, which gives me wool.

Despite the game’s cutesy look, Palworld is still a survival game. Dealing with broken weapons and having to eat (including using Pals for meat instead of help) and stay warm/dry are constant reminders of that. I absolutely appreciate that Palworld offers not only solo play but different difficulty levels. You can give me all the side-eye you want, but am I going to stick with playing on casual for the simple facts that it’s a little easier to catch Pals, and that I don’t lose all my stuff when I die? You bet your sweet bippy I will. And I am so far having loads of fun being able to actually, y’know, survive in a survival game. Oh, I still poke my head into Valheim from time to time, and I’ve started a route in a new-to-me survival game called Dysmantle, so I have more hardcore options available when needed. But there’s just some about how comfortably accessible Palworld is that makes it enjoyable to play. That, and…well, I have to admit that when I first assigned my Cattiva to my little base, and it started basing away at the near rock, I laughed. Heck, I’m still laughing just thinking about it! I have no idea why it amuses me so, but it just does. I’m sure that once I build a proper base, I’ll be able to have a team of Pals doing this and that, and it just sounds delightful.

Does that make me a bad person? Because I know there’s lots of controversy floating around about this game’s ethics, but…is it all that different from the “gotta catch ‘em all!” premise of the beloved Pokémon franchise? Well, I’ve only played a single Pokémon game, so maybe that’s not for me to judge. All I can say is that I’m enjoying its loop so far. Though, it’s not a perfect experience, by any means. I’m not sure what the devs were thinking with some of the text, not just that it’s mostly very small, but in some instances, it appears as white-on-white. As well, my household couldn’t get two-player co-op to work properly on dual Xbox consoles. After several failed attempts to join each other’s game, we got it to work once, only to have the connection fail after just a few minutes. This could have been due to the zillion other players trying to play the game, but who knows. Palworld is still an early access work-in-progress.

In this very moment, when people may be looking to escape the wintertime blues among so much else, it’s not the biggest surprise that a game like Palworld has skyrocketed in popularity so quickly. It’s an entertaining, silly game with an absurd premise that breaks away from the grit, grime, and stress that are hallmarks in many games these days. Palworld is like that one meal you get to have on your “cheat day,” or that special thing to which you treat yourself after a terrible week. Who knows how long the “goodness” will last, as the game will surely develop in new and different ways over time. But for now, Palworld is simply tons of fun.

All images, including lede were captured by author during Xbox Series S gameplay of Palworld (© Pocketpair).