Palworld, the smash-hit monster-catching survival game, has reportedly sold over seven million copies and counting in the five days since its Early Access launch. Now, developer Pocketpair has shared its early access roadmap for what lies ahead.
In a Steam blog post, the Palworld developer discussed what was coming to the game before it eventually leaves Early Access. This will include addressing critical issues and bugs that have emerged since the title’s breakout release late last week. “Sales have far exceeded the development team’s expectations, and we are currently experiencing many problems due to excessive access congestion, among other challenges,” the post said. “We will prioritise improving this issue first, and then move on to implementing new in-game features.”
Beyond fixing bugs and improvements to base Pal AI and pathing (as well as some help for those struggling servers), it looks like there are some pretty lofty plans for Palworld, likely in part thanks to the huge sales numbers giving the developer a boost to increase the scope of the game. Currently, according to the Steam listing, Pocketpair plans to keep Palworld in early access for at least a year but noted this could be extended or shortened depending on the progress of development.
Here’s what’s planned for the future of Palworld
・PvP
・Raid Bosses (End-Game Content)
・Pal Arena (PvP for Pals)
・Steam-Xbox Crossplay
・Various Xbox Feature Improvements
・Server Transfers and Migrations
・Improvements to the Building System
・New Islands, Pals, Bosses, and Technologies
PvP is one of the more major plans for Palworld, with Pocketpair having previously discussed the difficulties of introducing PvP to the game. “Deciding whether or not to include PvP is the biggest fork in the road in development, as it changes your list of priorities entirely,” Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe told Automation Media. “For example, in PvP games, fast travel is usually severely restricted, but I don’t think the average user nowadays would be able to tolerate an open-world game without fast travel. These kinds of things make it really difficult to combine PvP and PvE in the same map, and it wasn’t until I tried doing it that I realised, “Oh, so that’s why other games don’t do that.”
While classic survival game style PvP in the vein of similar games like Conan Exiles and Ark is one thing, the Pal Arena PvP is also of note – which sounds like it’ll likely involve throwing your Pals into combat against other player Pals Pokemon-style (while of course, that’s not the only similarity between Pokemon and Palworld). Whether you’ll be able to load your Pals up with heavy weaponry in the Pal Arena isn’t clear just yet, but a girl can dream.
Raid bosses and new islands and Pals are another exciting addition planned for Palworld, and I can bet you any money that there’ll be plenty of eagle-eyed users interested to see the new Pal designs, given the current lineup in-game has come under some intense online scrutiny for claims of plagiarism and pretty stark similarities to existing Pokemon designs.
It looks like Pocketpair has a lot of work to do while Palworld remains in Early Access based on their current plans for what continues to be referred to as “Pokemon with guns.” So far, despite growing discussion online about allegations of AI usage and plagiarism, the title is absolutely crushing it sales-wise and based on reviews (it sits at a ‘very positive’ 93% positive reviews on Steam of the over 76,000 reviews to date) before it even reaches a week old. Only time will tell whether through the newly-revealed roadmap and overall player enjoyment it manages to stay the course and get the difficult-to-maintain longevity of other popular survival games.
What’re your thoughts on Palworld? If you’re playing, which new feature from the roadmap are you most keen to see?
Image: Pocketpair
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