Palworld

It's on Gamepass as well.

I have a friend that's stoked for this game but the more previews I watch the less interesting it looks. The combat looks brain-dead and the farming/building/tamagotchi feeding/sleeping/petting looks monotonous as all hell. It seems like a bunch of tedious systems held together with half-baked gameplay.
 
Ah, yes, the game that has been massively promoted by bot farms. Won't be surprised if this gets abandoned like the developer's last grift, Craftopia.
 
2 million copies in 24 hours.
I'm only a few hours in but having a blast.

https://twitter.com/Palworld_EN/status/1748618579757711617

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All of the characters look like they are from Pokemon. I might give it a shot but I gotta see some gameplay. The previous game they made were nothing spectacular so they went all out with this game.
 
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Is it close enough to Pokémon for Nintendo to make a fuss? Cease and desist in 3-2-1.. 😉

Holy Crap I watched the video and It’s Pokémon, Minecraft, Ark etc and basically a lot of things people would love in a Pokémon game. If my kids see this and it’s not a cash grab or shut down I’ll have to buy several copies..
 
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Price is in free fall on gray market sites.
Also just hit #10 top concurrent players of all time.

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Pringle said:
Seems disingenuous to release an Early Access game while you already have one still in Early Access for 3+ years.
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I don't blame them, they could have kept trying to develop craftopia or create a game using all the lessons learned from it.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Yes, actually. It shows the dev isn't necessarily committed to finishing their projects. Thanks Pringle, I think I will pass too.
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Cool?

Im going to say current player numbers and positive reviews really speaks for the game and the developers commitment to provide a better product.
 
TheHig said:
Is it close enough to Pokémon for Nintendo to make a fuss? Cease and desist in 3-2-1.. 😉

Holy Crap I watched the video and It’s Pokémon, Minecraft, Ark etc and basically a lot of things people would love in a Pokémon game. If my kids see this and it’s not a cash grab or shut down I’ll have to buy several copies..
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It's pretty blatant plagiarism/copying
 

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Kinda shows what market Nintendo is missing by not releasing their games (at least pokemon) on PC. Will be interesting if they get hit with anything about the similar looking creatures... Not sure how much needs to change before lawyers start salivating at the lawsuit possibilities.
 
chameleoneel said:
It's pretty blatant plagiarism/copying
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lmao
In a blog post published this week, the CEO even claimed that Palworld’s 100 character concepts were made mostly by a single graduate student.

“She was a new graduate and had applied to nearly 100 companies, but failed them all,” he wrote. “And she is now drawing most of the characters in Palworld.”
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The stuff they ripped from botw is equally shameless.
The opening cutscene is your character waking up naked, finding a Sheikah slate that says "Go to the tower". Plus all the UI elements and sound effects they copied.

chameleoneel said:
It's pretty blatant plagiarism/copying
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There's over 100 Pals in the game... 6 being copied from Pokemon is more like an easter egg.
Unless they're all copies and nobody has made the comparison yet.
 
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WarriorX said:
Kinda shows what market Nintendo is missing by not releasing their games (at least pokemon) on PC. Will be interesting if they get hit with anything about the similar looking creatures... Not sure how much needs to change before lawyers start salivating at the lawsuit possibilities.
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You are correct on all points here.

The talk I'm seeing is that the lawsuits may not have much ground because they can cite parody, satire, and some other qualifiers. There are also other games that had similar looking monster come and go but certainly nothing this big.

I fully expect Nintendo to take a legal shot at it because that's what they do arguably to a fault.

The sales are speaking for themselves. This will get the entire industry's attention. Whatever effect it has past this remains to be seen. (clarified edit)

So much for the Pokemon (and the like) fad being dead and done with.
 
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Q-BZ said:
You are correct on all points here. The talk I'm seeing is that the lawsuits may not have much ground because they can cite parody, satire, and some other qualifiers. I expect Nintendo to try for it anyway.

The sales are speaking for themselves and should serve as a wake up call. We will see.

So much for the Pokemon (and the like) fad being dead and done with.
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Nintendo is still busy selling consoles and to do so they need their exclusives. Otherwise who would be buying something with 10yo hardware in it?
 
Armenius said:
Ah, yes, the game that has been massively promoted by bot farms. Won't be surprised if this gets abandoned like the developer's last grift, Craftopia.
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I played Craftopia pretty much all the way through with a friend. Spent quite a bit of time on it. It's a mess of a "game". Its most compelling aspect is its fully physics based animal torture and automation aspects. Yes, none of that word pasta is actually false.

You breed animals by putting them in a breeder that overhangs a cauldron. The cauldron is not for them, it's for the healing slimes (they explode in a healing cloud when dying) that are also being bred above or below them, that then fall into the cauldron, get cooked, die, and heal the actual monsters being bred. Why? Because the monsters are dying by being bred, too, so they need healing. Yes, literal, death by snu snu. Now, what do you do with the creatures actually being bred? Well obviously things like catapulting them on exit, directly into a treadmill that they generate electricity on, in order to create batteries. The game has actual realtime conveyor belts that take materials all throughout your demented factory and has auto smelters and auto miners and all of that stuff. Also has auto farmers, crossbows that shoot seeds into the plots, etc... aaaand even gacha machine farms, one of which we created before the open world update killed all of our progress.

Its assets, gameplay, etc, are probably largely stolen from Breath of the Wild, or are just some stock assets they found somewhere, and the "story" is literal nonsense. Many of the skills (and items) are also ripoffs or references to something else. It's also been in early access for a very long time, with no sign of that actually ending. It's clearly a side project. By the way, Craftopia also had monster capturing, that's where you got the seed monsters to put on your breeders. You could also summon them. I'm guessing they decided to just take that shit and put it into a game on its own? I'm not surprised they're just ripping assets from other games (and/or AI modifying them lol).

Anyway, the game is very casually demented. It's kind of hilarious. I recommend it for the automation aspect and silliness if nothing else, if you catch it on sale. Putting that aside, the friend that played Craftopia with me also said they tried out Palworld and said that it basically was just a Craftopia ripoff with better graphics lol. Well, and blatant Pokemon ripoffs.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
The stuff they ripped from botw is equally shameless.
The opening cutscene is your character waking up naked, finding a Sheikah slate that says "Go to the tower". Plus all the UI elements and sound effects they copied.


There's over 100 Pals in the game... 6 being copied from Pokemon is more like an easter egg.
Unless they're all copies and nobody has made the comparison yet.
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There are lots of comparisons floating around the web. The implication is they essentially separated Pokemon into distinct "parts", and then mixed and combined them, like a character creator. There are some elements which aren't 1:1 copy. But, most of the monsters have 2 or more elements which are practically traced from a Pokemon.

There are also comments from the game director, saying that the designs are primarily from one intern, whom "failed" 100 previous interviews.
 
chameleoneel said:
The implication is they essentially separated Pokemon into distinct "parts", and then mixed and combined them
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Even if they did, that is what the pokemon developers did with real life animals and other influences. So it all mostly leads back to mother nature.
What an actual lawyer has to say:
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(source)
 
I guess people don't care about originality anymore. just want a bunch of cuddle Marshmallow characters. People copy artwork with Comic books all the time there is a Facebook group called Art Swipe. Nothing ever happens usually when they swipe from Jack Kirby they usually write "After Kirby" on the bottom of the swipe.
 
Drexion said:
Even if they did, that is what the pokemon developers did with real life animals and other influences.
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Strawman.

We are talking about characters which were created by an artist. Artwork. art style. Not photo reference of real life.

There are several "Pals" from Palworld, which feature what is essentially tracing or copying of an art style and art direction. Mixing and matching specific elements of character/monster designs, colors, proportions, etc.

Look at the image I posted. The green Palworld dinosaur thing in the middle, features a crown atop a large flower blossom, atop the head of the dino. That is a very distinct design element. And that flower crown is about as close to an exact copy of the pokemon art shown below it. The small differences would only be attributed to the fact we are looking at a 3D model (Palworld) Vs. 2D artwork (from Pokemon). The dino's face looks to be nearly exactly the same as a pokemon dino, shown to the right. And the palworld dino also uses the same/nearly the same shade of green. Again, 3D engine Vs. 2D artwork.

Pringle posted a link, which contained the image I attached to this post.

They essentially copied and pasted the eyes and mouth from a Pokemon, onto the body of a Pal. The overall style of them, is the same. The colors are the same. The proportions are very similar. And if you look at enough of these Pals, you see all sorts of examples of that. Basically copying elements nearly directly, and then mixing them around to make their Pal monsters. Its not uncommon for games to have a design or two which are in omage to another thing. But, it looks like most or all of the pals, are created by mixing and matching copied elements. Some of them aren't mixed parts, but complete copies except for maybe a color swap (The Wolf in my original post, is essentially that. There are others). Some of them are made by combining copied details, and then using basic sense to connect them together into the form of a monster. Look at the blue Antelope thing, in the picture I originally posted. That one has some general differences in the overall form of the Antelope. But, the horns are placed the same as the pokemon, the face is white/lightly colored like the pokemon. The white feet, have an angular top outline to them, like the pokemon. The back hip, has a black angular marking on it, echoing the black marking on the ankles of the pokemon. The blue color used for the main body, is the same. The horns are nearly the same color. The color palette for the monster, is the same. cream horns. white face/feet. blue body. black angular detail, etc.

By now, there are lots of games which are about catching and/or collecting monsters. Pokemon wasn't the first, by a long shot. But, something like Digimon (which came after Pokemon), has a completely distinct art style from Pokemon. As well as completely different basic overall design of their monsters.
 

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chameleoneel said:
We are talking about characters which were created by an artist. Artwork. art style. Not photo reference of real life.
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Which the pokemon devs have done for decades, freely discussing it publicly, it's not a secret or anything. Every artist takes influence from other artists in some way.

Here's a couple examples, there's tons more from over the past couple decades
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Drexion said:
Which the pokemon devs have done for decades, freely discussing it publicly, it's not a secret or anything. Every artist takes influence from other artists in some way.

Here's a couple examples, there's tons more from over the past couple decades
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The first one is the only one which is leaning towards a shameless swipe. There is a lot of similarity, yes. It is AT LEAST translated through Pokemon's art style.

The second one uses the color scheme----but everything else is completely different. That's an omage, but only if a pokemon artist offered the comparison. Otherwise, the differences are actually so great, I don't think most anyone would make the connection on their own. Unless they too happened to be a huge fan of that particular monster, and recognized the color scheme.

Making a biped lizard is pretty much eternally connected to Godzilla. And there is also a ton of the Pokemon's artstyle used to make that (and that's a key point, which I will get to). The face is more similar to Bulbasaur than it is Godzilla. The claws are classic Pokemon design. It doesn't look like Godzilla, at all. Biped lizard are an eternal omage.

The other three are so mutually distinct, there's no real artistic connection there. Unless a dev/pokemon artisit outright shared those as inspirations, it would be really easy to 1. take them as fully original or 2. draw a comparison to any other vaguely similar creature/monster. Some of that is due to art style, and some of that is due to vastly different distinctive features.

Anyway, I don't think this post is some sort of got ya, for pokemon. The trouble with Palworld is that several of its designs directly lift distinct design features from Pokemon and don't even bother to change the art style much, if at all. And its not only Pokemon they are taking from:

The image attached is Sapphire from Steven Universe on the right, compared to a Pal from Palworld.

Palworld doesn't have its own art style or design language. It is simply taking other art and color swapping it or mixing arouind distinctive elements----but those elements nearly always retain much of, if not exactly the original style.
 

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tbf, those are clearly not derivative works, just somewhat influenced by the original.

Whereas the art in palworld often looks very nearly the same as the pokemon characters, as if you took a clay figure, cut it into pieces without deforming it (or only very slightly), and put it back together with pieces from other clay figures. Original maybe, but clearly derivative. Edit: actually, I'm kinda abusing the term here as well, since I'm not sure these would qualify as "original enough" to be called derivative, and therefore protected under copyright law. The pokemon examples above would be considered derivative, if not outright original works.
 
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They may be able to claim their use is a parody of the original work, which may provide protection from some or most copyright claims (under "fair use"). I doubt many of their designs will be copyrightable, still, due to their extensive use of the original art.
 
Nintendo is very litigious. With how much attention Palworld is getting, their lawyers are probably pouring through the game right now.
 
I have about 15 hours in it so far--the core elements are good but it has a lot of room to grow into something better.

Some nice things:
Big map to explore with many different 'pals'
No crashes or gamebreaking issues so far (linux+proton)
Progression seems reasonably implemented. Everything grants XP, new things are unlocked fairly often, and the unlocks feel good in combat (especially the items for your pals that unlock special abilities e.g. mount riding, using the firefox as a flamethrower, getting the monkey a machine gun)
Some notable pokemon features are included--type advantages, breeding, shinies, special ability training

Some cons:
The AI is super dumb. Pathing is rudimentary. Terrain features frequently cause pals to stop acting. Re-summoning will fix but this is a common sore point with flying pals.
Performance is not consistent. My game lags in the inventory screens after about an hour (memory leak?). Multiplayer performance has had intermittent issues with long load screens and rubberbanding.
The research tech tree seems superfluous and I think it should be removed and changed to unlock based on character level.
The food and consumable systems haven't been impactful (yet?)
The stats and abilities of the pals haven't mattered so far (level 20)

One last note--characters are not 'portable' like in Valheim. I'm not sure if this is in the plans but I miss being able to drop into multiplayer sessions without starting over.
 
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