An exciting looking new Pokemon killer called Palworld has been making the rounds online due to it’s pure meme energy. All the critters look like barely copyright safe pokemon copy pastes, the main character in the trailers is a carbon copy of Aloy and the entire project screams of asset flipping. But the hype around it is willing to overlook all of this due to it’s (admittedly unpolished) graphics spanking the pants off anything Gamefreak has so far been able to pull of. Oh and can’t forget the guns, there are so many guns. You can even use your sheep pokemon as a meat shield to soak up bullets according to the trailer. Pokemon getting shot is what we’ve all been waiting for and Palworld is here to deliver that. Or so they say.

Going back through the developers small library of titles reveals a worrying trend. According to reviews their games are left in a permanent state of disrepair, with development dropped pretty quickly so they can move onto the next project. According to the latest reviews of their first game Overdungeon released in 2018 consumers are reporting that the game has been abandoned and unfinished.

“Game was promising, but it has been abandoned without a word. ♥♥♥♥ these devs.”

“Game got abandoned. Don’t trust this dev. They develop something half done and then move on.”

“This game has some great ideas but still feels like a beta on many ends with several balance issues and serious bugs. Despite this, the devs abandoned the game. Apparently they did that to their next project as well.”

That next project is the Breath of the Wild clone + Kitchen Sink game Craftopia released in 2020. It looks like it has most of the elements Palworld does, except instead of cashing in on pokemon, it’s primarily cashing in on people who wanted to play more BotW but with crafting and farming mechanics. Honestly it looks like it could be a fun time if you can get over the fact that it has completely game breaking bugs worse than Cyberpunk 2077 on release day. Reviews report their progress disappearing randomly, buildings not staying put, and straight up crashing. The reviews are bitter…

“This may ‘look’ like if JRPG’s did Breath of the Wild, but it plays like a college student’s side project from a class they’re currently failing.”

“The positive reviews lured me in, just to find a buggy and rather glitchy experience, with some of the most basic gameplay features I’ve encountered.”

“This game felt like a cheap asset flip when I bought it in early access, but the concept seemed fun and I’m not opposed to buying a game that uses stock assets in its early stages. Turns out this is actually just what the devs do.”

What’s concerning is that Palworld really does seem to be an assetflip of Craftopia, taking everything with it and just adding pokemon, ditching progress on Craftopia entirely. One user also compared the early trailers saying they were almost complete copies of themselves as well.

Pocketpair doesn’t seem to be in the business of making finished games, Expect that Palworld will stay mostly in the state it was released in.