Palworld

Everyone who wrote Palworld off as a meme in January 2024 owes Pocketpair an apology. Version 1.0, released July 10, is not a token version bump — it’s the biggest update the game has ever had, and it turns the “Pokémon with guns” punchline into a properly complete survival game.

The barrier comes down

The headline is the World Tree, visible behind a red barrier since launch day and now the game’s endgame zone, joined by Sunreach — a floating sky island region — which together roughly double the map. There are 72 new Pals (287 in total), Awakening and Mutation systems for pushing your team further, a Wing Pack glider, offshore base building, revamped Tower Bosses and a structured PvP arena. Existing saves carry straight over, and the whole thing is free for anyone who already owned it.

The core loop — catch, build, automate, expand — is still one of the most quietly compulsive in survival gaming.

The identity crisis

PC Gamer’s read is fair: Palworld swings between cosy creature-collecting and dark factory satire, sometimes inside five minutes, and never fully commits to either. Multiplayer connectivity remains the most-patched area of the game, so co-op still throws the occasional disconnect. And the repetition creeps in — Palworld is superb at handing you one more small objective, less good at making them add up to a story.

Verdict

With 40 million players, a free 1.0, and a genuinely enormous content ceiling, this is the best-value entry point the survival genre has right now. Buy it for the automation and the co-op, not the narrative — and know that Pocketpair’s legal fight with Nintendo, while unresolved, hasn’t slowed the game down at all.