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As a child of the '90s-era pocket monster craze, I had what I suspect historians will call Monster-Taming Madness. A not-so-terrible, but sort of annoying affliction that meant I always had a Tamagotchi in my pocket, a handful of Pokémon cards, and the entire Spice Girls discography on standby for summoning creatures from discs in Monster Rancher.

Need to Know What it is: Pokémon: Survival Evolved, a few of them open carry Release date: July 10, 2026 Developer: Pocketpair Publisher: Pocketpair Reviewed on RTX 4080, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64GB RAM Steam Deck: Verified Link: Steam [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623730/Palworld/]

To say I was obsessed is putting it mildly, but in all that time I spent collecting little guys and preparing them to duke it out, I never once considered the obvious: What if I gave one of these guys a gun?

When it launched in early access, that's what Palworld was known as: Pokémon with guns. It's not an entirely unfair description of the survival crafting, creature-collecting adventure, and two years ago, I would've agreed with it. It certainly looks like a case of copying someone's homework, though that's not a good distillation of the Palworld 1.0 we have today.

Palworld has come a long way since early access, with the bones of a satisfying, iterative creature collector all here. I just wish I jived with more of the survival bits, and that Palworld embraced the things that make it stand apart from Pokémon outside of hokey ultra-violence satire.

It's not what it looks like, I swear. (Image credit: Pocketpair)The Pokémon in the room Let's go ahead and get it out of the way—yes, Palworld's trainers, pal spheres, and even some monster designs are all similar to Pokémon. And yes, that's part of the appeal. It's also one of the least interesting influences when you start digging into the meat of Palworld's systems.

Comparisons to Ark or Conan Exiles feel more apt with its minion-like system for catching pals and deploying them to do base-keeping chores back home. In Ark, dinosaurs toddle about your base completing grindy survival crafting tasks, while thralls in Conan Exiles serve a similar purpose.

Palworld's pals work like the dinosaurs and thralls, but the execution is leagues better. Organizing your workforce is immediately satisfying in a way the others aren't, because you don't have to fight with it. I catch a pal, check its skills, and drop it at a crafting station to get started. There's no overly obtuse taming mechanic, and no need to engage with messy stat calculus. Even when I didn't have a clear grasp of all the nuances, my army of cute critters got their chores done without much fuss.

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