Developer Pocketpair just announced that its Pokemon-style survival crafting game Palworld has sold over one million copies in eight hours since its release.
The game launched this morning in early access and it was immediately flooded by eager Pal Tamers, so much that the servers started to buckle under pressure.
Yet, the launch certainly appears to be a success, as mentioned on the title’s official X (previously Twitter) account.
Some may be thinking that the flattering sales number may include players on Game Pass, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The official Japanese X account of the game is a bit clearer, mentioning that the million is just sales on Steam. This means that the number of actual players is likely much higher.
Looking at the game on Steam, it’s the current top seller with a massive 370,000 peak concurrent users achieved about half an hour ago (via SteamDB).
User reviews are “very positive” with many players impressed by the deep survival mechanics and by the fact that it surpassed their expectations. That’s not exactly surprising considering that the “Pokemon with guns” theme led many to underestimate Palworld as a meme game that existed just to spoof Game Freak’s popular franchise.
As it turns out, Palworld is much more than just a Pokemon clone. Due to its crafting survival mechanics, which are popular on their own, it definitely stands on its own two (or four, depending on which Pal you’re looking at) legs.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see its trajectory, but for now, it appears to be a massive surprise success, which is always nice to see.
If you want to see more about Palworld, you can read our hands-on preview (written by a big Pokemon fan, mind you, so if you enjoy the storied franchise by Game Freak, you may relate to the point of view) and check out a video showing how to use your Pals effectively.
