Palworld continues being an absolutely ridiculous success for developer Pocketpair, as they've announced it's hit 19 million players in less than two weeks.
I do wonder what will happen with those 19 million once the shine wears off. Getting to max level and “catching them all” isn’t really that difficult nor that terribly time consuming. If I had kept playing, I would have hit 50 by now and probably have most of the available pals. And to be fair, I may get back to it and do so, but once I’m done with that I’ll probably put the game away.
I suppose a goal one could have is to work toward being as efficient as possible with their base. But unless there’s some compelling feature after maxing out level and catching the pals, the game is effectively won. Which may be fine and be what is intended (until an expansion arrives).
It’s definitely more shallow as a singleplayer experience. In the end it’s a survival game and those shine with emergent gameplay when you play with others. Looking at stuff like Rust I believe there will be a core playerbase that sticks around just for that.
But even if singeplayer isn’t its main focus, it’s definitely a breath of fresh air to have a creature collecting game, that isn’t a slow strategy combat slog for once, like Pokémon for the past 20 years.
I do wonder what will happen with those 19 million once the shine wears off. Getting to max level and “catching them all” isn’t really that difficult nor that terribly time consuming. If I had kept playing, I would have hit 50 by now and probably have most of the available pals. And to be fair, I may get back to it and do so, but once I’m done with that I’ll probably put the game away.
I suppose a goal one could have is to work toward being as efficient as possible with their base. But unless there’s some compelling feature after maxing out level and catching the pals, the game is effectively won. Which may be fine and be what is intended (until an expansion arrives).
It’s definitely more shallow as a singleplayer experience. In the end it’s a survival game and those shine with emergent gameplay when you play with others. Looking at stuff like Rust I believe there will be a core playerbase that sticks around just for that.
But even if singeplayer isn’t its main focus, it’s definitely a breath of fresh air to have a creature collecting game, that isn’t a slow strategy combat slog for once, like Pokémon for the past 20 years.
Good points!