The newly released Palworld is being accused of copying Pokemon designs, with fans of the latter highlighting similarities between the critters.
Pokemon is soon celebrating 28 years since the franchise was first established, probably releasing new trailers and announcements about upcoming games on Pokemon Day. Pokemon games are monster-collecting at its finest, and for a long time, some fans wanted the series to have competition — enter Palworld, a new title from Pocket Pair that uses cute Pokemon-like critters to help players build structures and survive in the wilds. While Palworld and Pokemon games are hardly comparable on a gameplay level, with the former gaining the nickname of «Pokemon with guns,» Pocket Pair’s new early access release does share quite a lot of DNA with Nintendo’s franchise, to the point that there’s a huge controversy brewing.
Palworld’s Pals can be caught in the wild much like Pokemon would, even having items that are not too dissimilar in terms of functions to the classic Poke Ball, but there is no turn-based strategy component to the game or other typical gameplay features of the Pokemon franchise. Where these games collide, however, is in the design of their creatures, and Pocket Pair is currently seeing quite a lot of plagiarism accusations thrown at Palworld. In various cases, there do seem to be a bit too many similarities between Pokemon and Pals, and it may be hard to call all of them coincidences.
