Palworld gets a taste of its own medicine in new mobile “pal-like” blatantly inspired by Pocketpair’s survival game

Pokemon’s evolutionary line expands again

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When Pocketpair released Palworld earlier this year, everyone was pretty shocked by what seemed like an obviousPokemon rip-off,and now Pocketpair itself is getting a taste of its own medicine with a new mobile game that looks anawfullot like Palworld.

Just like the pocket monsters you may have grown up with on your Game Boy, Nintendo DS, or Switch, developer Pocketpair’s Palworld is full of adorable fuzzy creatures, except some of them very rudely shoot guns. Though, not even the panda-like Mossanda’s twin grenade launchers could protect Palworld from the very fate it subjected Pokemon to. The newly released mobile game Miraibo Go might be the first-ever pal-like, and fans are once again conflicted.

“It’s literally a reskin of Palworld…” said one Redditcomment. “Same concept, animations, and even the monsters are shamelessly similar.” Well, the open-world survival game’sGoogle Play descriptionmight see its creatures' overlap with Palworld’s more as an ode to a “classic,” if you’ll allow something that only entered the world a few months ago to qualify as such.

“More than 100 classic monsters with different skills and elements will accompany you on your adventure!” it says. “Worried about not being powerful enough? Defeat bosses to improve your team strength!”

You can assign monsters to base-building to and help them battle with firearms, just as you do in Palworld.

“This is a complete 1:1 rip-off of Palworld,” declared one recentGooglePlay store review. “The only difference is that […] combat is extremely janky, the hitboxes for all attacks are completely off of where you’d expect them to be.”

“If you want a survival game with tiny text on a phone screen, this game’s got it,” offers another glowing review.

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I won’t lie, it’s hilariously ironic thatPocketpair is facing legal action from Nintendo over its Pokemon-like Palswhile also contending with a new game that’s arguably even more similar to Palworld than Palworld is to Pokemon.

Huge Game Freak leak reveals Pokemon source code, unused designs, Switch 2 details, and unannounced Gen 10 games.

Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.

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