Since its launch on Friday, Palworld, a product of the Japanese company Pocketpair, has become an overnight success.
However, because of server crashes, players occasionally had trouble logging on, despite its unexpected popularity.
Because of the creatures’ resemblance to Pokémon, the game has also been criticized for being a Pokémon knockoff.
A “multiplayer monster-collecting game with open-world survival elements” is how Palworld is described.
Players, known as “pal-tamers” travel around a large map battling human foes and creatures known as “pals” which can be captured and recruited.
The monsters can either fight alongside the player in battles, or be put to work at a base, crafting supplies and items for use in the field.
At its peak, the game reported almost 1.3 million concurrent players via Steam, according to tracker website Steamdb, and the team behind it had to hold an emergency meeting to fix early connection issues.
Wesley Yin-Poole, UK News Editor for gaming website IGN, said early interest in the game “gave us an indication that it was going to be very popular, but no one expected it to be as popular as it has proven over the weekend”.
He said Pocketpair is a small developer “with a few games under its belt, but nothing explosively popular like this”.
As they move across a sizable map, players—referred to as “pal-tamers”—fight against human adversaries and creatures that they can capture and enlist as “pals.”
The monsters can work at a base making tools and supplies to use in the field, or they can fight alongside the player in battles.
The game’s development team had to call an emergency meeting to address early connection problems when it reached its peak, with Steam reporting nearly 1.3 million concurrent users, according to tracker website Steamdb.
The game’s early reception “gave us an indication that it was going to be very popular, but no one expected it to be as popular as it has proven over time,” according to Wesley Yin-Poole, UK News Editor for the gaming website IGN.
Four million copies of The Last of Us Part Two were sold in just three days. Palworld’s sales have surpassed that of the fastest-selling PlayStation exclusive ever, demonstrating its enormous success.
“It just goes to show that this sort of genre is immensely popular and, personally, I’m just surprised it’s taken this long for someone to do something like this.”
