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Palworld developer Pocketpair's next game Never Grave just got a new demo
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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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There's not a lot that kills my faith in a game like a studio having two active early access games with premises people are interested in, but that need work, and deciding that promoting a third new game is a better use of their time.
They gone viral and try to use their viral power to push as much to gain the capitals back. Yes it's not healthy and it could all go south really quickly if they don't manage it well. Viral go up and boom quickly but to sustain it is hard. You need actual good game loop and mechanics to keep player coming back for content drip.(assuming not live service game.)
The valheim devs did the opposite and I love them so much for it. The game blew up massively, but they didn't expand, didn't rush, and while the game has only received one major update and several smaller updates in years, the updates are incredible.
Palworld is a good start, but it needs several fixes to be truly amazing. Notably pals working in the base tend to get stuck, things glitch into the map frequently and make them difficult or impossible to catch or fight, interaction points for workbenches and chests can be glitchy, and the game NEEDS a work priority setting. My handiwork pals will abandon anything and everything to help me build something, but if I put something on a workbench it might sit there forever while they endlessly haul or harvest. For all the automation available, I feel like I have to micromanage to get anything done.
Still a solid 7/10 all things accounted for. Fix the bugs and it's a 9, easily.
Not to mention that early access games are avoided by a lot of people, myself included. My friend group won’t dive into any EA game even if it has content and is bug free unless the game is feature complete. Our reasoning being that we don’t have a lot of time to play so we aren’t going to play a coop game and then return to it. Learned our lesson with satisfactory where we essentially have to play it twice since we liked the game.
So yeah, devs should get to that 1.0 launch asap because I know I’m not alone.
If they actually built out the viral success, they could sell a lot more copies over time.
I'm not convinced pushing another game now is going to generate more revenue than it discourages, especially with the pretty visible dissatisfaction people have for Craftopia being replaced. It's definitely lowered my interest, though it's entirely possible I would have never bought it.
I think they are just riding the wave, I did not know them, I saw the waves of marketing attempts but survival crafting genre is never my thing. (I had my fill during the Don't Starve/Subnautica time, and unfortunately I do not like them as game mechanism. ) I still didn't even checked the gameplay videos even though they pop on my youtube feed.
We will see in about 2 months and see how many still playing Palworld, if they can still keep 40% of their peak number then their loop is good enough to keep player engaged. (roughly similar decline happened after Baldur's Gate 3's peak.)