What Is Palworld? The New 'Pokémon With Guns' Survival Game Everyone's Playing

Palworld first captured the attention of gamers (and their internet sphere) when it was revealed back in 2021. While that reveal included details about the survival aspects of the game, including multiplayer, crafting, and farming, viewers honed in on the idea of it being Pokémon but with guns. You can capture Pokémon-like monsters called Pals in special balls (and you can capture humans, too), but it's smart to shoot them or hack at them with an axe first to lower their health. And then, once under your command, you can give them their own guns to use, of course. 

Following various trailers since that 2021 reveal, including this gameplay showcase and this one highlighting the different Pals you can find, we learned at Geoff Keighely's Summer Game Fest last year that Palworld would finally enter Early Access on PC via Steam and on Xbox in January of 2024. Ahead of that launch, Game Informer spoke to developer Pocketpair about the game and internet speculation that it's fake; and last week, we finally checked the game out for ourselves – watch Game Informer's gameplay here. While we enjoyed playing the game's first few hours, we never could have predicted how meteoric its first weekend would be. 

If you haven't kept up, more than 5 million people purchased Palworld in its first 3 days on the market, with an all-time peak of 1,581,679 players playing it concurrently on Steam at the time of this writing (notably, this peak is different from the one I just saw moments ago, meaning even more players are continuing to pour in). That peak means Palworld has achieved the third-highest all-time peak in Steam history. It is safe to say Palworld is blowing past any and all expectations, and if you were on the internet at all this weekend, there's a good chance you read about its debut, controversy, and more. 

But if not, fear not – we've got you covered. 

If you aren't familiar, Palworld is a survival game from Pocketpair, an independent developer behind games like Craftopia