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The game Palworld is a hot topic. It has been criticized for plagiarizing Nintendo's famous game franchises 'Pokemon' and 'Zelda', while also being praised for providing a new and attractive experience with a unique concept that the franchises could not provide.
Pal World is an open world game created by Japanese game developer Pocketpair. After launching on Steam Early Access on January 19th, more than 5 million units were sold within 3 days. This is a sales volume comparable to that of a large-scale AAA game that costs a significant amount of money to produce.
'Pal' in Palworld is 'pal' in 'pen pal' and is a word used to mean a familiar friend. The main character's goal is to explore the mysterious island where 'Pal' lives.
Like a typical survival game, you adapt to the environment by controlling 'hunger' and 'temperature'. If you collect the necessary materials from wood and stone, you can create a ball that can hold your arms. Once you build a structure, you can deploy the arms and they will start harvesting resources if they are nearby. When you build a new building, arms come together to help. Advance as you level up your skills, from stone axes to spears, crossbows, and assault rifles.
It looks like a typical survival game, but it's a side view of a bright fantasy world. Players can hold their arms out in front of them during combat to use them as cannon fodder. Monsters can be used as workers in automated factories or slaughtered(!) if necessary.
It contains a degree of freedom that Nintendo franchises were unable to provide while repeating existing experiences. It seems to have been a huge success because it provided a liberating experience to loyal Pokémon customers who had been oppressed.
However, plagiarism controversy cannot be avoided. It borrows many elements from successful games such as climbing and gliding 'Breath of the Wild', production automation 'Factorio', and creature management 'Pokemon'. Although it is acceptable to borrow good features to create a better experience, the 'monster design', which is a key element of the game, is receiving great criticism. Anyone can see that it looks the same as Pokémon.
I believe that this success was created by accurately targeting the complaints or regrets that customers currently have. However, it is always difficult to judge how much is learning and how much is theft.
Games and services have grown by borrowing elements from each other for user convenience and enjoyment. At first glance, it sometimes feels like the same game with a different appearance. But within it, he presented his own unique key elements that made a difference. So I don't think the entire game is plagiarized. However, the core element of Pal World, ‘monsters’, is blatantly the same. I wonder if Nintendo will just sit back and watch this.
Every Tuesday morning, a designer with 16 years of experience curated Collect design trends.
