If it ain’t broke, add survival crafting elements.
Palworld has absolutely taken the real, non-pal world by storm, but no matter how big the survival crafting Pokémon brutality engine gets, I’m staying in my bunker to play crusty CRPGs from 1998 until the storm clears. Studio Pocketpair’s next game, Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse, might be a little bit more my speed though.
My first thought was “damn, that looks a lot like Hollow Knight,” and there’s an easy temptation to lambast the studio for a repeated derivative quality to its games. Like with Palworld’s Pokémon DNA, though, Never Grave’s Hollow Knightness seems mostly superficial, and the game looks set to bring some innovations of a similar scope to Palworld’s world beating “what if survival crafting games let you have little guys to do the boring stuff at base?”
While the environments scream Hallownest, Never Grave isn’t bug-centric like Hollow Knight, with enemies including minotaurs and giant lizard-knights.
