Video Game / Palworld

Friends by choice, companions by force.

"It's like Skyrim, but with Pokémon."

— OneyPlays

Palworld is a mish-mash of an Open World Survival Sandbox Action RPG Third-Person Shooter Doujinshi Mon Game developed by Japanese developer Pocketpair. It released on January 19, 2024, for Steam Early Access, with later launches for the Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.

Set in the Palpagos Islands, the Player Character finds themselves stranded in a land surrounded by various creatures called Pals, where you have to find a way to survive amid these creatures. The game encourages an open-ended stance to how you treat your Pals, either treating them kindly or subjecting them to cruelty, the choice ultimately falls to the player what they do with them.

The game is also known for the extreme amounts of Black Comedy it has, with the game outright reveling in the mistreatment of its various Pals to varying degrees. It being a Deconstructive Affectionate Parody of Pokémon in the mishmash style of Panzer Dragoon, Freedom Wars, and Player Unknowns Battlegrounds, it takes place in a Crapsaccharine World filled with colorful mons called Pals who you can choose to protect or exploit. The game's open world, especially in regards to its design and progression, also takes very obvious cues from games like Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, ARK: Survival Evolved, Grand Theft Auto, and Red Dead Redemption II.

Of course, all the violence isn't without good reason; this ain't Kanto, after all, and unlike the (relatively) friendlier critters you find in the aforementioned Pokémon games, many of the hostile Pals you will encounter are all too willing to use lethal force — as will the various hostile human factions currently vying for control of the islands and the Pals on them for their own uses, so you'd best be ready to answer in kind.

Trailers: Trailer 1, Trailer 2, Trailer 3.

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This game includes examples of:

Tropes A-C

• Ability Depletion Penalty: If you run out of stamina, you become unable to do anything requiring stamina until it fully recovers (such as sprinting, climbing, or using melee weapons). This spells massive trouble if it occurs in water, as swimming and climbing out of water both cost stamina and you do not recover stamina in water, making it a one-way ticket to drowning, unless you can reach shallow water before your health runs out. Pals that serve as mounts also expend stamina for using skills and their various abilities, and fully spending their stamina carries the same penalties.
• Affectionate Parody: Despite also being a Deconstructive Parody, the game clearly holds affection for its source of influence in Pokémon, and it shows with the player being able to subvert or reconstruct the nature of the world to treat Pals like friends as well. That's not even getting into the sheer level of detail put into both game mechanics and Pals to replicate the parent franchise, such as using cut Pokémon as inspiration for some Pals, which shows how the game makers are dedicated fans of what they're parodying.
• Airborne Mook: Several Pals are capable of flight and will attack you from their advantageous position, although they often come close to the ground in order to attack. This also makes a number of them immune to ground-based attacks like Rock Lance and Iceberg until they descend. When captured, flying Pals (except Galeclaw, who's used as a glider) can then be used as flying mounts once their saddles are unlocked and crafted.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Occasionally, your base will be attacked by either bands of hostile wild Pals or criminal Mooks (the custom difficulty settings allow the player to disable these in a world). This usually leads to a Big Badass Battle Sequence when the Pals stationed at your base fight back.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • While being mildly over-encumbered will remove your ability to climb, it does not prevent you from climbing out of water, preventing unavoidable drowning.
  • You can still use your grappling gun to launch yourself short distances while over-encumbered. While this is extremely inefficient for actual traversal, it makes transferring heavy items between storages/bases much more feasible. Additionally, a later patch allowed players to continue moving at a snail's pace no matter how severely encumbered they are.
  • Wanted status usually follows your character throughout the entire game, until death. However, if you begin a tower boss battle with a wanted status, and connect with at least one attack, they will despawn and your wanted status will disappear.
  • If you die during a tower boss battle, Sealed Realm battle, or dungeon, your dropped items sack will be neatly placed in front of the entrance, instead of inside the instance where you died.
  • At most initial spawn points during the beginning of the game, there is a "friendly" NPC nearby who, a couple of times, will give you a few welfare items to jumpstart your first base creation (assuming you talk to them, and assuming you avoid hostile actions toward them).
  • Pal Spheres will spawn in small quantities as gatherable items in the wild, meaning the player will almost always be able to go catch Pals at a slow pace, regardless of current coin and resource fortunes.
  • Extreme temperatures in the initial spawn areas are designed to encourage the player to craft mitigating gear but are not tuned to be unbearable before they are able to do so. Getting caught in a cold or heat wave is usually not a death sentence at this stage of the game.
  • While Pals caged by the Free Pal Alliance and Rayne Syndicate can take damage, they cannot be killed even if you reduce their HP to 0. This means reckless use of explosives and trigger-happy Pals with area-of-effect attacks won't screw you out of rescuing the caged Pal.
  • Version 0.1.5.0 made it so that your weapons will no longer damage your buildings, so you won't reduce your entire base to rubble if you had your rocket launcher out instead of your Grappling-Hook Pistol.
• Applied Phlebotinum:
  • Paldium is a material that can be collected and mined, and is responsible for the more sophisticated technology in the setting like Pal Spheres and personal Deflector Shields. As a curious quirk, Paldium deposits seem to always lie either close to water bodies (whether freshwater flows or the sea), or in especially damp places.
  • The opening cutscene has the player waking up with a mysterious tablet beside them that, according to an NPC in the starting area, is what allows the player to create Pal Spheres and command Pals.
• Aquatic Mook: A number of Pals are found only in or around the water, such as Surfent, Kelpsea, and Jormuntide. Those that can be mounted via a saddle can be used as aquatic mounts.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: A player can only have up to five Pals on hand at any time; any Pals captured while you already have five are automatically sent to the Pal Box. Additionally, you can have only one Pal active at a time (though certain Partner Skills like Daedream's allow you to have it out in addition to another if you have the appropriate Pal Gear).
• Arrows on Fire: The ability to craft flaming arrows is unlocked early in the game.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The AI pathfinding in this game can be rather terrible at times. Both Pals and humans can get stuck behind terrain, and Pals at a base can often get stuck on top of objects or ores with no way down, causing them to be unable to perform their jobs while also becoming unable to eat. They're also extremely prone to simply getting stuck in a corner of your base for no apparent reason or walking into a spot outside your base (usually off a cliff or ledge) and then getting stuck because their pathfinding breaks.
  • If a Pal decides they're going to use a Burst ability, such as Shadow Burst, they will do everything in their power to get within range to use it - even if your sprint speed can keep you away from them forever. It's entirely possible to kite certain bosses such as Lyleen in perpetuity just by running in a vaguely circle-shaped pattern because they need to use their Burst attack before they return to their normal attack pattern.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Double Barrel Shotgun is great for crowd control and close-quarter combat against higher-leveled Pals. However, it quickly loses effectiveness in terms of damage should the range be past point-blank plus unlike the Pump Shotgun, ammo can easily be wasted when fired carelessly and can easily break when overused.
  • The Musket deals absurd damage per shot, far more than even guns well above it on the techtree, making it very ammo efficient. However, it also takes several seconds to reload, and the reload sequence is reset if you have to dodge or switch weapons.
• Audible Gleam: Lucky pals sparkle and emit constant sparkling sounds that can be heard from quite a distance.
• Back Stab: Tagging a Pal from behind with a Pal Sphere gives a higher capture chance. Sleeping Pals are likewise easier to capture with a thrown Sphere, and will take extra damage from the first attack that hits them (at which point they wake up).
• Batter Up!: A bat appears as a low-tier craftable weapon for defending yourself against hostile NPCs and softening up Pals for capture. Lower-level Syndicate Thugs will also show up wielding bats.
• Beef Gate: Higher-level areas of the game discourage the player from exploring them by having Pals that are not only strong but are also aggressive and will attack the player on sight, making short work of any low-leveled player and their Pals (who have a level cap restricted to that of the player's).
• Beehive Barrier: Shields have a very distinct hexagonal pattern when activated.
• Black Comedy: The game has reams of it, going by the various awful things you can do to Pals, from using them as bullet shields, to overworking them to death in factory lines, to using them as ammunition for your guns. And that's just what you can do to your own Pals; weakening them for capture can involve shooting them, smacking them around with weapons, and straight-up punching them in the face until you've softened them up. Oh, and you can do all this to other humans, too.
• Bloodless Carnage: Whether you're shooting humans or Pals, no visible blood or wounds appear. Likewise, despite the game's lore, Pals aren't actually killed, but "defeated", implying that the heavy amount of attacks and ammunition you use on them merely knock them out.
• Boom, Headshot!: Shooting enemies in the head usually results in a Critical Hit that causes double damage.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Lucky Pals not only have significantly improved stats and higher levels than their non-Lucky counterparts in the area, they'll also have attacks that the Pal normally cannot learn except by using skill fruits. In some cases, these are attacks that are learned at the Level Cap, with the attendant power. It's not unheard of to smack a Lucky Com Mon like a Cattiva or a Chikipi only to get instakilled by a Dark Laser to the face.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Crossbows. For as much as the game's marketing focused on the guns, many players will have a crossbow on them at all times and high-tier crossbow schematics are a treasured find. They unlock early, hit modestly hard, and their ammunition is incredibly cheap and quick to make. At higher levels the crossbow's damage tapers off, but that remains an advantage as it's less likely to overkill higher-level Pals you want to capture than a rifle or shotgun.
  • Berries. They restore low amounts of hunger, but they're abundant, easy to produce and their plantations are unlocked very early on. They can be cooked to provide slightly more satiety, but all you'll really need is to spam-click berries to feed you and the pals in your party. Later on, you can cook these with excess flour from your cake-producing bases to produce Jam Filled Buns, which fill exactly 51 hunger. Putting these in a small Feed Bag means you never need to manually eat again, as you'll take the Jam Filled Bun once your hunger drops below 50, which then fills it back to full.
  • The Makeshift Handgun and Single-Shot Rifle. While both of them get outclassed by the Handgun and Assault Rifle respectively later on, the former has ammo which are very common and easy to craft while the latter deals just as much high damage-per-shot as the Musket yet reloads significantly faster compared to the aforementioned weapon with just as easy to craft ammo. Plus the Makeshift Handgun hits somewhat harder compared to the regular Handgun despite the slightly slower fire rate and the Single-Shot Rifle is both accurate and cost-effective compared to the rapid-firing Assault Rifle which burns through ammo quickly when used recklessly.
  • Out of all player stats to upgrade, Weight Limits is the most important regarding how much more the player can carry, especially when it comes to carrying heavy materials like coal, ore, and fragments.
• Breakable Weapons: Downplayed. Weapons, tools, and armor break down with use and become less effective (weapons and tools do much less damage, armor will only provide protection from environmental extremes and will no longer provide protection from damage) but they will never totally break and vanish. They can be restored to full effectiveness using materials at a repair station though.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Some Pals can function as this, with larger ones even happily providing cover for the player to shoot from. Lamball, for instance, has a Partner Skill in which it's picked up with one hand and used as a shield before being callously tossed aside.
• Cap: All of a player's Pals have their level capped to that of the player's current level. This prevents players from catching an over-leveled Pal and then using it to flatten much of their enemies.
• Capture Balls: Pal Spheres are used to capture Mons at low HP. They even work on humans NPCs, although this is considered an illegal practice In-Universe. The spheres seem to have some sort of magical domestication power (bordering on enslavement), as the pals and people you capture will obey your commands no matter how miserable it makes them (though there is a mechanic where they may refuse to work if treated poorly enough).
• Cast of Expies: Pretty much every Pal is a clear reference to a Pokémon, though there are a few who come from other games.
• The Chew Toy: The Cartoon Penguin, Sweet Sheep and chicken Pals Pengullet, Lamball and Chikipi receive the greatest amount of abuse in the various pre-release materials, with it all being Played for Laughs. Lamball is even featured in an official short paying tribute to Canadian animator brainqueen's videos on how one would theoretically butcher a Pokémon for consumption. In-game, Lamball and Chikipi also get very unflattering Paldeck entries labeling them as the bottom of the food chain. And they're some of the very first Pals you find, too, especially Lamball and Chikipi, so they're often subject to the player's first impulses of Videogame Cruelty Potential.
• Circling Birdies: Stunned pals display stars circling around their heads.
• Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: After falling asleep, a new day is accompanied by a rooster crowing.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: Items have five possible tiers: common (white), uncommon (green), rare (blue), epic (purple) and legendary (orange).
• Comedic Sociopathy: Between having cute animals be Chew Toys, having Pals be piled up in cages, and showing off all the Video Game Cruelty Potential, Palworld is clearly having a blast poking fun at Mons series.
• Com Mons: No matter where you go on the Palpagos Islands, expect to see a smattering of Chikipi and Lamball everywhere. Lamball, Chikipi, and Cattiva are the Pals who greet you in the game's opening cutscene, and they're fittingly among the first and most common Pals who can be encountered in the wild. The Paldex entries for the former two Pals Lampshade the trope by mentioning how they're at the bottom of the food chain.
• Confused Question Mark: Pals whose attention you've caught will display a question mark above their heads, as if to signal that they're confused or curious about you. If that question mark then becomes an exclamation mark, that's your cue to start dodging as it means they've decided to fight.
• Continuing is Painful: By default, Normal worlds make you drop all your items (including equipment) on death, while Hard worlds make you drop your Pals as well. Custom difficulty allows you to adjust the penalty for death, including a setting to make the player not drop their equipment (but still drop non-equipped items).
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Up to four people can play in the same world at the same time, or up to 32 on a dedicated server, allowing players to share resources and bases.
• Cop Killer: You are perfectly free to kill PIDF officers. Just be warned that they are tough and will respawn infinitely.
• Crapsaccharine World: Zig-Zagged, as the game appears to take the A World Half Full approach with the bright, cutesy art style by taking the social anarchist tendencies of solarpunk to their natural conclusion. While you can be cruel to them, amicable cooperation with mons is just as viable, as you can have your Pals help you out in day-to-day living and form genuine bonds with them. On the other hand, the vast majority of the humans you encounter belong to certifiably evil groups, all with their own nefarious goals.
• Creature-Breeding Mechanic: Once you unlock the Breeding Farm structure, you get to use it to breed male and female Pals together by treating them to cake. The species of the parents determines the offspring's species, though more often than not it will often be something completely different from either parent; with a bit of patience, a lot of cake, and probably a guide, you can easily breed powerful late-game Pals long before the game expects you to have access to them.
• Critical Encumbrance Failure: Subverted, as over-encumbering your player character will have different effects depending on how over-encumbered you are. Just going over the limit blocks you from jumping and performing actions that require stamina but doesn't otherwise slow you down, but as you go further over your carrying limit, you'll gradually be slowed to a crawl. (On release, being extremely over-encumbered would make you completely immobile, though this was quickly patched out.) Encumbrance also applies to Pal mounts, meaning you can't bypass this by simply riding a Pal instead. You can mitigate this a bit if you have a grappling gun equipped, which can pull you in distances depending on the gun's class.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Being a Deconstructive Parody of Pokémon, Palworld isn't afraid to say the quiet part out loud about how nightmarish some deaths truly are, such as Hangyu stripping the flesh from the bones of tied-up criminals, getting one's brain and organs sucked out by Killamari, or Orserk inflicting injuries that it uses to electrify its foes from the inside-out.
  • Victor Ashford conducted all sorts of hideous and lethal experiments on captured Pals, ranging from live dissection, grinding them up and feeding the resulting paste to other Pals and fusing them to produce grotesque creatures that inevitably die.

Tropes D-F

• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: On PC, the default controls for switching between the Pals on your team is 1 and 3. In order to throw your Pal Sphere, the default button is Q. Many players reported wasting their Pal Spheres on accident due to how close the two buttons are on the keyboard.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist:
  • On Easy difficulty worlds, dying does not penalize you at all aside from sending you back to a spawn point, and even that's trivial given that they're usually next to a Fast Travel point. In fact, dying on these worlds is beneficial for exploring by letting you spawn in at different places with all your stuff intact.
  • Dying in single-player, even with the hardest difficulty settings, is still ultimately just an inconvenience; the player is simply required to go retrieve their belongings from where they died. Nothing is permanently lost, even with subsequent deaths, so long as you don't have too many Death Chests around that they start despawning, that is.
• Deconstructive Parody: Palworld notably takes a serious look at what kind of world where Mons exist in would be like. And because it's also an Affectionate Parody, it's not just in an Darker and Edgier sense like some other kinds of Mons Series deconstructions would do.
  • Something the game emphasizes the logical point of a world of semi-sapient Mons is that they would be used just as much for combat as they would for basic utility. Fire-elemental Pals help light campfires and keep you warm, Electric-elemental Pals are great as a Living Battery, and can even be used to electrocute fish for each catching, Water-elemental Pals are great for drinking water and watering plants... and on the darker side of this, it also means that Pals would be misused and exploited as slave labor or illegal catching.
  • The game also deconstructs the idea of Mons supplanting human weaponry, by making a case that a Death World full of such creatures would make a great case for human weaponry. Pals in-game operate best as backup fighters, as it's noted that it would be realistically hard to make a fighter of what's effectively a wild animal (albeit a highly intelligent and emotionally capable one), not to mention dangerous given that virtually everything is trying to kill you. Guns, while it takes a lot to bring a Pal down, are very much the best shot a human has of defending themselves and are a reliable answer to Pals. One article even speculates that the question isn't "why would the world of Pokémon have guns?" and is moreso "why wouldn't the world of Pokémon have guns?"^note Some of the earlier episodes of Pokémon did have guns, most notably at one point where a Safari Zone official pointed a revolver at Ash after being caught off guard, and another in which a trigger-happy mayor utilized a tank to fight a giant Tentacruel (to little effect), not to mention Team Rocket occasionally using weapons such as rocket launchers to fire various (nonlethal) ordnance in their endeavors to purloin other trainers' Pokémon. The Remoraid-Octillery evolutionary line even bore a closer resemblance to a revolver and a tank, respectively, in early drafts, and even their more current appearances still retain some of those features. As the franchise wore on, however, most depictions of military equipment and lethal weaponry were phased out, ostensibly for the benefit of younger audiences, though guns have not been phased away completely and will occasionally crop up in indirect forms; for example Inteleon's "Snipe Shot" ability with the accompanying Finger Gun pose, and by extension its Gigantimax Hydrosnipe "water sniper rifle" move.
  • On a similar note, it also puts aside the honor-based turn-based combat of normal Pokémon to point out that pragmatism is going to win you the day. If you do not already have a Pal, one of the ways that you can weaken a Pal before capturing it involves hitting a Pal with a bat. There's also nothing against you simply shooting an enemy Pal trainer or ganging up on a Pal until it's unconscious, and from what has been teased, these aren't just viable strategies but optimal too. On another level, you also keep your Pals in spheres and can instantly recall them and release them whenever you want, just like in Pokémon, so an ideal response to a deadly attack is to just recall your Pal so the attack misses then release it again.
  • Palworld is also one of the very few Mons Series to answer a deeply uncomfortable question: "If Pals and humans share a common ancestor, does that mean you can capture humans in Pal Spheres?" The answer here, of course, is "Yes": capturing humans inside of Spheres — while considered inhumane and very illegal — can, and does, happen, and allows the Pal trainer to potentially sell them off on the black market. Or even butcher them.
  • Tying in with how it deconstructs the idea of Mons replacing human weaponry, the villain teams will not engage you in a 1-on-1 battle with mons and then stand aside once they're beaten. Instead, they'll attack you en masse with everything from guns to crossbows to wooden clubs, and will not stop until you either kill them or they kill you.
• Deflector Shields: Players can craft personal shields that protect against damage and recharge after a short period of not taking damage. Additionally, any damage that fully depletes a shield will not overflow into HP, meaning that even the weakest shields can sponge a single strong hit and leave the wearer unscathed.
• Double Jump: Some rideable pals like Fenglope can jump mid-air. Taken even further by Paladius, who sports a triple jump.
• Dumb Muscle: One of the random traits Pals can have is "musclehead", which grants a considerable damage bonus in combat, but doubles the time they take to complete work tasks.
• Dump Stat:
  • At this point in development, Attack. Adding points in attack is often considered a waste, due to the very small amount it provides per level (2%). You'd need to use up all 49 of your skill points in attack to raise it to almost twice its amount. If a player does want to use a player attack damage build, using four Gobfins with Vanguard and a mount with a Spell Blade effect can achieve a similar result anyway.
  • Work Speed is likewise one of the weaker stats to put points into since the Gameplay Automation of having Pals do your work at a base tends to outweigh the need for faster work speed, especially the ones with better work stats, to say nothing of the tasks that can only be done by Pals to begin with (such as smelting and milling). Faster mining, on the other hand, tends to be covered by just making a better pickaxe, and your mining rate is often limited more by carry weight anyway.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The announcement trailer had two notable design changes as compared to the current Early Access release.
  • Mozzarina looked more like a normal cow with a snout and open eyes◊, instead of the current flat face design with Cute Little Fangs and Eyes Always Shut.
  • Syndicate mooks were shirtless and only wore red-tinted goggles. Their current design has them wearing long black shirts and full-face masks.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses:
  • Alpha Pals tend to be far tougher than regular Pals of the same level, due to having inflated stats and massive damage reduction to make them harder to bring down while simultaneously being able to kill you in a few hits. The Mammorest in the opening area is one such boss and it's level 38. While it's neutral unless you attack, trying to fight it at low levels is ill-advised — it hits like a tank and you have less than 1% chance of capturing it.
  • Legendary Pals take this even further. They have more health and even more damage reduction compared to Alpha Pals of a similar level, requiring a tough fight to put them down or weaken them enough for the player to capture.
  • Most of the game's actual bosses that are fought in the Towers. They not only have several damaging attacks and moves and far more health than enemies of their level, but also have a strict 10-minute time limit they must be defeated in.
• Eldritch Location: The Palpagos Islands are a beautiful place to be once you get past the warring factions and Pals that will kill you if you mess with them. However, several diaries reveal something off about the place.
  • For one, the islands' existence seems unknown to the outside world. The Castaway noticed a particular area was "empty" after looking at the globe's geological features and islands. Something should be there, and he was surprised no one else saw an apparent absence in that place. On the other hand, one of the first NPCs you meet is the Expedition Survivor, who makes it clear that she and her fellow expedition members came from the outside world, with her name implying they did so on purpose, unlike the Castaway or you.
  • The Castaway's next diary revealed when he tried to go to the islands by boat, he noticed a massive fog cloud surrounding them, making it impossible to discern it from the sea. When he tried to turn around, an even deeper fog enveloped him, and he was attacked by... something. Whatever attacked him destroyed his ship, but he survived and washed ashore. He wonders if whatever attacked and broke his boat was tied to whatever was trying to keep the islands hidden.
  • Then there's the existence of the towers, giant monoliths sticking out of the earth guarded by each faction leader in regions across the islands. They're large, technologically evolved structures that send whoever enters them to an arena surrounded by space and stars. Whatever these towers are, they've been on the islands for a long time, with one of the faction leaders, Zoe Rayne, saying her missing father watched his tower before her. She asks why she's even doing this but thinks it's tied to a legend passed down on the islands about a "great power."
  • Finally, we've got the tree. In the distance lies a giant tree, and the energy it releases becomes Paldium, making it the source of Paldium on the Palpagos Islands. The towers that the faction leaders guard are tied to the tree, with the opening intro saying that they're "the key" and that the tree "holds the truth." As of now, the tree can't be reached, let alone explored yet.
• Emergency Food Supply Animal: "You must be prepared to do anything if you want to survive. You may even need to consume Pals sometimes...". In fact, Chikipi normally becomes food in the Palworld videos, and the game itself enforces this to the point that the Paldeck entry notes that, despite being food for essentially everything else on the island, the population never seems to decline. The game doesn't let you do this easily, however, as doing so requires you to go through quite a bit of the techtree and craft an item that enables the function. This is even discouraged if you're playing optimally, since it's much better to use Pals in the essence combiner or for their labor purposes (and if you really need food in a pinch there's usually some sort of wild Pal around you can hunt for their meat), so the only practical reason to butcher your own Pals is to be a special kind of cruel.
• Enemy Mine: By the time you hit level 40, you've become such a threat that the other factions (except the PIDF) will put aside their differences and form a raiding party (dubbed the Anti Pal Tamer Alliance) made of their toughest mooks with the Rayne Syndicate contributing Syndicate Elites, the PGRU contributing Executioners armed with laser rifles, Brothers of the Eternal Pyre contributing Martyrs with flamethrowers and the Free Pal Alliance contributing crossbowmen with electric stun bolts.
• Equippable Ally: Several Pals' partner skills allow them to be used as equipment, such as Foxparks being usable as a flamethrower or Lamball being a shield.
• Evil Versus Evil: All of the human factions and their leaders are scum.
  • The Rayne Syndicate are a group of Evil Poachers who also terrorize local towns and are led by Zoe Rayne, who's the daughter of the previous founder and who's only trying to survive, having been forced to join, as they never taught her any skills that would allow her to survive outside of the Syndicate, and knowing that they will turn on her if they think she isn't strong enough.
  • The Free Pal Alliance are an Animal Wrongs Group filled with hypocrites who cage and eat Pals in spite of their leader's teachings and who are all too eager to attack Pal tamers. Their leader Lily Everhart is a Misanthrope Supreme religious fanatic who worships the Pals and has nothing but utter contempt for her fellow humans.
  • The Brothers of the Eternal Pyre are a group of bloodthirsty pyromaniacs run by Axel Traverse, an unabashed Blood Knight with a huge appetite for violence.
  • The PAL Genetic Research Unit are a group of amoral Mad Scientists seeking to exploit Pals as Bioweapon Beasts. Their leader, Victor Ashford, is an utterly reprehensible Mad Scientist who conducted experiments (where all of the test subjects died horribly) to produce the perfect Bioweapon Beast.
  • The Palpagos Islands Defense Force runs "sanctuaries" which are little more than desolate islands covered in flowers that are used to make the more questionable medicines. The leader of the defense force is Marcus Dryden, a greedy Dirty Cop who made money by selling drugs to the community he was supposed to protect, arresting the customers, fining them, confiscating the drugs, and then selling them again. If abusing the local villagers wasn't enough, he also starved and drugged his Pal.
  • And of course, you can also be another evil faction if you've been gleefully engaging in Video Game Cruelty Potential.
• Excuse Plot: So far, the closest thing that the game has towards an overarching plot (besides the collectible journal entries), is the mysterious message left on the strange device at the beginning of the game: "The towers are the key...the tree holds the truth."
• Exposed to the Elements: Averted. You will start to freeze at night or in cold climates if you run around in your underwear without a roof over your head or a source of heat, losing health over time. The northern parts of the islands also demand cold-resistant armor to avoid freezing, and even then, going out at night without a heat source is suicide.
• Expy: Several Pals appear to be based on various Pokémon, such as Lamball being inspired by Wooloo or Anubis being an Egyptian-themed Lucario.
  • The sphere that the player throws at Pals is also a clear reference to a Pokéball.
  • You can strengthen your Pals by harvesting the souls of other Pals through a machine. In other words, you are giving them Pal Candy.
  • Certain Pals have variants with different typings and a suffix indicating this (Joltog, for example, has the Ice-elemental version Joltog Cryst) which tend to have different habitats from the base form; this seems to be based on subspecies from Monster Hunter or Regional Variants from Pokémon.
  • Lucky Pals seem based on Shiny Pokémon but do not have any different appearances aside from some light coming off them. At least Lucky Pals are stronger.
  • On a non-Pokémon source, Skill Fruits seem based off Devil (or 'Cursed') Fruits from One Piece.
• Fantastic Nature Reserve: Its equivalent to the Safari Zone, the Wildlife Sanctuaries, is a more realistic take rather than hunting grounds, being actual nature reserves guarded by the PIDF where even setting foot there is considered trespassing (but Evil Pays Better). Fortunately, the species exclusive to the sanctuaries can be found as Field Bosses or by breeding, allowing you to obtain them legally. They can often also be purchased from Black Marketeers, which is mildly less legal but won't get you in trouble with the cops.
• Flamethrower Backfire: Some mooks from the Rayne Syndicate and most mooks from the Brothers of the Eternal Pyre carry flamethrowers. If you set them on fire, the flamethrower's fuel tank explodes with predictable results, and shooting the tank will cause them to leak and ignite the user (and then explode). Oddly enough, if the mook survives the tank explosion, they can still use the flamethrower with no problems.
• Forest of Perpetual Autumn: There is an area near the starting point where all the trees have orange leaves.
• Friendly Fireproof: You and your Pals cannot harm each other with attacks in combat, nor can you hurt other players or their Pals (yet — PVP is a planned update).

Tropes G-Z

• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • Normally, Lifmunk Effigies are supposed to boost your catch rate/chance when used on the Statue of Power. However, due to a bug, this decreases your chances instead. This makes catching Pals much harder if you go out of your way to find effigies, and makes the lategame even worse. Thankfully, the 0.1.4.1 patch fixes this bug.
  • It has also been reported that using the Memory Wiping Medicine to respec stat points will also erase the catch rate bonus granted from Lifmunk Effigies. This was fixed in the 0.1.4.0 patch.
  • Grenades will decrement their own stack count by 1 when thrown, but an oversight in the programming means it also reduces the stack counter of whatever nearby players have in the same slot, deleting the other players' gear. This has thankfully also been fixed.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The Bioweapon Beast mon Shadowbeak was stated to be the single success of Playing with Syringes by Victor Ashford and its DNA was so mangled that it's questionable it's even a Pal anymore. Not only can you breed one using a specific combination of Pals — no horrific experiments needed — they can be found in the wild and are capable of breeding with other Pals.
  • It's stated that capturing a human in a Pal Sphere is inhumane and it's heavily implied that it's very illegal to boot. You can sell captured humans to legitimate Pal merchants without consequence and you can run around with a team of captured humans and no one will bat an eye.
  • Verdash is stated to have Fertile Feet, but the No. 2 Wildlife Sanctuary, which is the sole place they naturally spawn, is a barren wasteland.
  • Sibelyx are mentioned to like rainy days and also using their Stylish Sunhats to shelter Foxparks from the rain. However, their native habitat in the Astral Mountains is too cold for rain, and Foxparks do not appear in the area at all.
• Gameplay Automation: Pals can be used to craft items, collect resources, produce items, grow crops, smelt, and cook, making it significantly faster than if the player did so on their own. Pals need both food and adequate rest to prevent themselves from getting overstressed from work, however.
• Game Hunting Mechanic: A lot of Com Mons like Chikipi and Lamball can be hunted at will for their meat, and some of the larger and stronger Pals give better quality meat as a reward for taking on the challenge. Capturing Pals also gives meat for some reason. Not all Pals drop edible meat, though.
• Godzilla Threshold: Once you get over level 40, you've become such a threat to all of the interest groups in the isles that one of the potential raids is an alliance of all of the island's factions… except the PIDF, who need a legal reason to go after you.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Eventually, the player unlocks a pistol that fires a grappling hook. Useful for travelling fast when there are no pals around.
• Green Hill Zone: The starting area, Windswept Hills. Lots of lush greenery all around, plentiful resources, and more importantly, all of the local Pals are non-hostile until attacked, including the bigger ones. Be very glad for that last part, because things like Dinossom and especially the Alpha Mammorest will flatten you if you piss them off.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • As of now, the specific breeding combinations for elemental variant Pals as well as specific Pals (Grizzbolt, Lyleen, Orserk, Faleris, Shadowbeak) aren't shown in the game. One will need to view an online walkthrough to find the specific combinations. Elphidran Aqua and Frostallion Noct are particularly notable, as they cannot be encountered anywhere in the wild or as a boss, hatched from eggs found in the wild, or sold by Black Marketeers — you have to breed Elphidran and Frostallion with very specific Pals to respectively obtain them.
  • Improving Pals via the Essence Condenser will improve their Partner Skill, but the description of the Partner Skills themselves do not state how they are improved, nor are any specific numbers given. Swee and Sweepa (and the mechanically similar Beegarde and Elizabee) is a notable example; the Partner Skills for both Swee and Sweepa state that Sweepa gains a stat boost for each Swee in your party, but only improving Swee will increase the stat boosts gained this way, while improving Sweepa gives a small permanent Attack bonus instead, and the game does not tell you any of this.
• Hand Cannon: The handgun models are big, though they're not terribly hard-hitting.
• Highly Visible Landmark: Upon death, your dropped belongings will emit a skyward beacon to help you find the location again. Each of the regions also has a boss that can be found in a highly visible menacing tower.
• Human Traffickers: Human enemies can be captured and sold in the Black Market for a good price, assuming you have no compunctions against human trafficking.
• Idea Bulb: Pals display a light bulb above their heads when they can help the player with a task.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Unopened treasure chests can be found around the world, containing items of value.
• Instant Militia: While the Pals assigned to work at your base will primarily help out with tasks like construction and gathering, if anything hostile comes along, they can drop what they're doing and Zerg Rush the offender. You can also construct an alarm bell structure that allows you to sic them on invaders.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Single-use keys can be found in unlocked treasure chests or looted off some Pals, and come in different tiers to open various types of locked treasure chests.
• Joke Character: Any human captured in a Pal Sphere is one of these. They only have one attack (a simple punch), even if they were armed before capture; poor stats; can't be taught additional attacks via skill fruits; lack Pal abilities; and have only the handiwork skill (at level 1). The only human that averts this is the Syndicate Elite, whose punches hit as hard as the rocket launcher they used before being captured.
• The Joys of Torturing Mooks:
  • The game allows you to build and place hanging traps to capture enemies and Pals that wander by. You are then free to use them as target practice or punching bags. For the particularly sadistic, you can build a campfire underneath them and then watch as they slowly burn to death.
  • Players have exploited a quirk in how PIDF soldiers spawn to farm them for ammunition, money, and Pal Spheres. This entails committing a crime, climbing up to an elevated spot where you occupy the only spot of land, and then smacking the PIDF soldiers as they teleport in and then watching as they fall to their deaths.
• Kid With The Remote Control: Downplayed compared to most Mons Series. The gameplay has the Pals playing more of a support role instead of being the main attackers; you can summon them to help during combat, but they don't do much else beyond their signature moves. Interactivity between the Pals varies, with some being treated like mounts or even being directly controllable in certain circumstances.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Mercy Hit passive acts like False Swipe from Pokémon, by preventing a Pal with it from lowering an opponent's health below 1. The Ring of Mercy allows the player to make their attacks non-lethal. Both of these make it much easier to capture Pals without accidentally killing them.
• Lethal Lava Land: Mount Obsidian is an active volcano with exposed lava pools dotting its slopes. It's downright inhospitable except to Fire Pals and the Brothers of the Eternal Pyre, and players attempting to explore it without heat-resistant gear will find themselves burned to a crisp in short order.
• Let's You and Him Fight: If you kill a wild Pal of a normally-docile species without others nearby noticing, they'll get mad when they see the corpse of their fellow and will attack whoever they deem responsible, which is often the first thing they see. If that happens to be another Pal, they'll start attacking that Pal for something you actually did.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • The Nature Preserve islands are filled to the brim with rare, powerful Pals that you can't find anywhere else save for a few available as bosses, but just setting foot on them is a crime that'll get the PIDF on your trail. However, "setting foot" is Exact Words; if you stay mounted on a flying Pal like Beakon, you can poach all you want without provoking the PIDF since you didn't technically didn't set foot on the island (though as soon as you dismount you'll be flagged as trespassing, even if you get back on afterward). Additionally, as the saying goes, "it's only illegal if you get caught", as the PIDF have to actually detect you on the island to flag you. Simply avoid approaching or attacking any human guards that spawn, and you're in the clear. The 0.1.5.0. patch changed it so your presence alone would get the PIDF after you.
  • You will get charged with assault if you attack a civilian or PIDF officer. Your Pals, however, are not "you", and therefore using your Pals to resist arrest and fight back against PIDF officers does not get you additional charges, even if you were riding that Pal and ordered it to attack.
  • Food will begin to spoil the moment it lands in an inventory. Food that has never been in an inventory, such as a meal you haven't picked up from the cooking station yet, never spoils.
• Lost Technology: Defeating or capturing Alpha or Lucky Pals will reward you with Ancient Technology Fragments while beating bosses grants Ancient Technology Points, implied to be knowledge and tech from the previous civilization of the Palpagos Islands. Fragments are often required to craft higher-tier equipment, including more powerful versions of common gear whose schematics can be found while exploring, while Ancient Technology Points allow crafting of gear and structures that unlock additional functionalities. There are also other bits and pieces of lost tech scattered all over; the Wildlife Sanctuaries in particular have large, geometrical masses of sci-fi metal protruding all over, much of which sinks into the water out of sight, implying each of them was part of something big once.
• Low-Tech Spears: Zigzagged. A stone spear is the second melee weapon you can unlock. But metal and refined metal spears are available at higher levels with the metal spear being available at the same time as the crossbow and the refined metal spear being available after the handgun.
• Made a Slave: You can capture humans in Pal Spheres and then put them to work building your base or crafting items.
• Made of Incendium: Wooden materials in this game are insanely flammable compared to not just real wood, but also wood from most other survival games; where a wooden house would take hours in real life and minutes in an average survival game to burn down, a large wooden house in Palworld will get instantly set entirely ablaze from the smallest spark and burn down in seconds.
• Mêlée à Trois: It's not uncommon to see Syndicate thugs or other human enemies duking it out with wild Pals, often hostile ones; the player is free to involve themselves as they wish. The Free Pals Alliance is likewise hostile toward the Syndicate, both can sometimes be seen attacking their own teammates, and both are hostile toward the player. One of the most optimal methods of defeating or capturing an Alpha Pal field boss is invoking this trope by getting other Pals or human goons in the area to whittle it down for you, then launching the killing blow or a Pal Sphere at the last moment.
• Modular Difficulty: There is a custom difficulty option where individual aspects of the game can be adjusted such as damage taken or maximum base level.
• Monster Compendium: The game has the Paldeck as its Pokédex equivalent, with a blurb appearing after catching a Pal.
• Never Say "Die": Zigzagged; while the game has no problem presenting the possibility of death, and many species' Paldeck entries deal with it, it also goes out of the way to make things ambiguous and often dodges around using the actual word. Enemies taken down by the player and their Pals are always "defeated" rather than "killed", but one of the tutorial blurbs reminds the player that "killed" Pals cannot be caught. Muddying the issue further is the game running on Bloodless Carnage and giving defeated Pals swirl-eyes associated with incapacitation in the game's inspiration, and captured Pals giving the same drops as defeated ones (including meat for applicable species).
• Never Trust a Trailer: Because of the game's invoked Troubled Production, all the trailers showcased things that never made it into Early Access. And that's not counting the dramatic art style change from stylized and cartoony in the earliest trailers to the more realistic style seen in the later trailers and the Early Access. To go further into detail:
  • The announcement trailer showed a whale, what looks to be a white-colored subspecies of Dragostrophe and a massive city. These never appear in the game.
  • The trailers also implied that fusing two Pals together was possible. This feature is not in the Early Access release.
  • Ridable vehicles were shown in the trailers but are absent from Early Access. In particular, one trailer showed a Syndicate armored column with Leezpunk support attacking a player base. No Syndicate raid will ever have Pals with them.
  • The Paldeck trailers that showcase the Pals are also very deceptive with many of them showing Alpha Pals at levels and locations they cannot be found in. Just to give an example, the Paldeck trailer for Bushi shows an Alpha Bushi at level 43 being fought in a desert. While Bushi do spawn in a desert, the only Alpha Bushi is level 23 and is found inside a special boss arena.
• New World Tease: Three areas near the center of the map contain a small desert, a small mountain, and a small magma flow with relatively unique Pals. These areas are but a tease for the much bigger desert, mountain, and volcano islands, which do contain most of their respective Pals at much higher levels.
• Nightmarish Factory: Normally, work isn't too stressful on Pals, but the player can craft a Monitoring Stand to demand cruel or even brutal work from their Pals, turning bases into this trope. Doing so will increase the Pals' production and movement speed, but also deplete both their Sanity and Hunger much more quickly while also making them more prone to injuries. Inversely to this trope, there's also a "Relax" setting where Pals will work slower, but their Sanity and Hunger deplete slower.
• Noisy Guns: Any weapon with a trigger makes gun-cocking noises whenever wielded or aimed. Yes, that includes the crossbow.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: If a player's Pal is defeated in battle, they can recover after spending some time in the Palbox. Base Pals that get incapacitated can be rescued by other base Pals and brought to their bed to sleep it off.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Like many Survival Sandbox games, outside of a handful of Apocalyptic Logs, the game has little story to speak of.
• Not Completely Useless: Capturing humans in Pal Spheres is mostly something done for laughs given their awful stats, lack of Pal abilities, poor working abilities, and weak, non-replacable attack. However, capturing merchants and black marketeers grants you access to an instant shop at your bases or even while you're roaming the overworld, along with how each time you store and release them, their stock instantly refreshes, removing the tediousness of waiting for a new selection. In addition, while Syndicate Elites still have only the punch attack, a quirk in how the game calculates damage means that their punch deals as much damage as a rocket launcher, giving you a very powerful "Pal".
• Notice This:
  • Many items that can be picked up from the ground will sparkle.
  • If you die, your death location is marked with a beam of light and a marker on the map and compass, showing you exactly where to go to recover your stuff.
  • Approaching a fast travel point causes it to be marked on your map and compass. The fast travel points themselves also have a very bright glow around them.
  • Lifmunk Effigies glow bright green, making them especially easy to spot at night.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Campfires were intended as a source of warmth and light as well as a way to cook food. When it was found that walking over a campfire lights you on fire, inflicting damage over time, people quickly began to use them in traps — whether it's the simple trick of luring enemies into walking over campfires or the more involved (and crueler) technique of trapping them with a hanging trap and then building a campfire under them.
  • Thanks to glitchy furniture hitboxes, people have used them to make unusual buildings such as staircases and lampposts.
  • The death bag created when a player dies has several features to preserve that player's inventory and facilitate reclaiming it — however many slots were filled in the player's inventory is the number of slots the bag will have, and it pauses food spoilage timers, plus it projects a light beam upwards that allows it to be opened from high above in case it sank into the ocean... Cue players filling every slot in their inventory with single coins and then hitting the respawn option inside their own bases to conjure up a storage vault that has more space than the actual storage chests, keeps their food fresh forever, and can be conveniently accessed from all floors of the base.
  • The "rescue" mechanic, where active base Pals will take incapacitated base Pals to a bed so they can recover, is meant to keep your base operational after an attack without the need to swap out your workers, but it's also the fastest way to revive your party; simply swap your incapped party member for one of your workers, let them be taken to a bed, then immediately swap back afterward and let natural Regenerating Health take care of the rest.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Nails used to be the premiere money-making method because of their simple production chain and the relatively high price they sold for. In fact, they were so efficient at making money that instead of crafting ammunition, people crafted nails, sold them for gold, and then bought ammunition. Come 0.1.5.0., nail prices were decreased from 160 per nail to 20 per nail.
  • Landing on the Nature Preserve islands would get you wanted for trespassing and the PIDF guards patrolling the island will immediately turn hostile. But if you didn't touch land by being mounted on a Pal, the guards would ignore you and there would be no effect on your Wanted Meter. The 0.1.5.0. patch changed it so your presence alone would increase your Wanted Meter and turn the PIDF guards on the island hostile.
  • 0.2.0.6 made it so flying or floating Pals are now immune to Falling Damage after people cheesed Jetragon by luring it off the nearby cliffs.
  • You used to be able to instantly revive Pals by placing them in the viewing cages. 0.2.0.6 patched this out.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: At this point in development, carry weight. Equipment and especially raw resources are so heavy and you have to gather so many of them yourself, even with three bases, that you'll be doing a lot of mining and hauling back and forth regardless of playstyle at all points of progression. While every other stat has a way to offset not having it, there is no getting around the importance of carry weight and you need much more than you can get from bonuses and Pals alone.
• Organ Drops: Items dropped from defeated Pals often encompass body parts and meat, with Fire, Ice, and Electric Pals often dropping Flame Organs, Ice Organs, and Electric Organs respectively, implied to be the source of their abilities. Oddly enough, you can also get these drops by simply catching a Pal as well.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: The main draw of aquatic mounts is their capability to move on water without losing stamina. However, this is rendered moot by several flying mounts that can also hover over the water without losing any stamina, while being able to fly as well.
• Patchwork Map: Palpagos Islands features hot deserts, cold mountains, and temperate grasslands.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Rayne Syndicate thugs are often seen attacking humans or Pals unprovoked and are shown holding Pals in cages for unknown nefarious purposes; Free Pal Alliance members are members of a Pal worship cult who attack those who they feel don't treat the Pals properly (read: everyone else); the Brothers Of the Eternal Pyre are a group of bloodthirsty pyromaniacs who run around with flamethrowers, setting fire to everything for the hell of it; the Palpagos Island Defense Force are led by a Dirty Cop drug dealer and it's implied that the nature reserves they protect are really fronts for their leader's drug trafficking operation; the Pal Genetic Research Unit are a group of mad scientists who conduct cruel experiments on the Pals in order to make the perfect Bioweapon Beast. You are perfectly free to capture the mooks of any faction in Pal Spheres and then enslave them, sell them to merchants, or just butcher them. Of note is that capturing mooks of the Rayne Syndicate, Free Pal Alliance, Brothers of the Eternal Pyre, and Pal Genetic Research Unit will not increase your Wanted Meter, suggesting that the police are perfectly fine with you doing terrible things to them.
• Phonýmon: The entire point of the game is to be a Black Comedy Pokémon parody, and it cheerfully acknowledges this in its marketing, much of which plays up the similarities to Pokémon for the sake of irony.
• Pillar of Light: If you die, your death location's "Death Chest" emits a beam of light that goes pretty high up before stopping.
• Pistol-Whipping: A captured human wielding a gun will strike enemies with their weapon instead of firing it at them.
• Pixellation: Choosing to "butcher" your Pal instead of "pet", when equipping a Meat Cleaver, will cover them in a pixel censor while the deed is done.
• Primitive Clubs: The first weapon available in the techtree is a crude wooden club that's only marginally better than hitting things with a pickaxe or bare hands.
• Protection Mission: Raid Bosses are essentially these, with the item in need of protection being your Palbox. If the Palbox goes down due to damage from the boss, the raid automatically ends in failure, as there will be no more base for the Raid Boss to take place in. This makes building the Palbox on foundations a bad idea for Raid Bosses, since foundations have much lower health than the box and if they are destroyed, the Pal Box gets destroyed too.
• Ragdoll Physics: Defeated enemies and Pals become fully subject to physics, with a powerful finishing blow sometimes sending the victim flying in a manner akin to Tamrielic Giants clubbing their victims into orbit. Right at the start of the game, you can easily get a showcase of this if you defeat a Lamball, as the terrain of the starting area is quite hilly and Lamball's spherical form often results in it rolling all the way down the hill and out of sight.
• Regenerating Health: Health slowly regenerates outside combat.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Downplayed, as health also regenerates, but shields regenerate much faster, as long as you can avoid damage for a bit, letting them quickly recover to full in combat. By contrast, the player's HP regeneration is far too slow to really make a difference while fighting, and the only way for the player to restore appreciable amounts of health in combat is to be healed by one of the few Pals capable of doing so.
• Ribcage Ridge: Gargantuan skeletons can be found in a variety of places, such as off the coast south of the Grassy Behemoth Hills, on the slopes of Mount Obsidian, and in the caves.
• Sanity Meter: Each Pal has a Sanity gauge that lowers from doing work and recovers when sleeping or relaxing. If a Pal's sanity drops too low, they become prone to slacking off and refusing to work, or in particularly dire cases, they may start causing disturbances.
• Scunthorpe Problem: Version 0.1.5.0 introduced a profanity filter that cannot be disabled. Unfortunately, it was too sensitive and it led to things like "Warsect" being rendered as "W***ct" due to the "arse" in the middle of the name. This was remedied in the 0.1.5.1 patch.
• Shop Fodder: Gemstones and the "precious" Pal drops have no purpose other than to be sold for a chunk of cash.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The basic-level shotguns of Palworld are functionally melee weapons, dealing half damage at any range longer than point blank.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Apropos to being a Phonýmon parody of Pokémon, it does a lot of research and inspired designs from the vast majority of existing Pokémon with clear homages to them as a direct result. They've done such a good job that many people were worried that Nintendo was possibly going to sue despite being within fair use of deviating enough from its inspirations. They've even went as far as taking from unused Pokémon designs, from Rushoar actually being based on an unused Pokémon design, specifically an unnamed Pokémon that resembles a boar with antlers◊, to Mau resembling the cut Pokémon Berurun◊, to Swee, Sweepa, and Wumpo being based on cut Pokémon Wolfman and Warwolf. It just adds to the fact that despite relentlessly mocking common Pokémon tropes and being a Deconstructive Parody, it's an extremely Affectionate Parody as well with how much love and care was put into these Pal designs.
  • In the desert areas of the map, the temperature is extremely hot during the day, but also extremely cold at night, requiring the player to wear heat protection during the day and cold protection at night. This is indeed true for several deserts in real life.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The setting's Poké Ball equivalent works on humans as well as mons (albeit with a very low success rate), and allows the Player Character to control them all the same for their own nefarious purposes. Doing so is noted to be very illegal, and is a fast way to get the City Guards after you if you're caught in the act.
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Certain pals may be based on the same type of animal, but vary in anthropomorphism. Cinnamoth and Sibelyx are both moth Pals, but Cinnamoth appears to be the less anthropomorphic of the two, having a body and wing shape closer to a moth's, while Sibelyx has a Humanoid Female Animal body shape, wears a hat, and its "arms" are its own wings.
• Stat Sticks: A decent number of Pals have abilities that passively provide some form of stat benefit just by having them in your party, and these stat boosts stack, meaning a viable method for combat is having one Pal for combat while the other five sit in your inventory boosting it, or in the case of Gobfin, boosting the player while using a mount that provides its own boosts to your attacks.
• Strictly Formula: With few exceptions, the Paldeck videos follow a predictable formula: show 'TODAY'S PALDECK', the Pal and the name, the player shooting at the Pal, the player outright calling help from a previous Pal in battle, the player throwing a sphere that catches the Pal, the player petting the Pal, the Pal at work, '>NEXT PALDECK', and a preview of the next Pal in battle.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Averted and played straight. Hostile Pals will attack humans on sight but will run away from more dangerous Pals, meaning a player walking around with a high-level Pal escorting them is unlikely to be bothered. Human enemies, however, will attack anything on sight. Cue Rayne Syndicate mooks between levels 5-15 attacking a level 30+ Mammorest and predictably getting completely stomped by the Pal.
• Taking You with Me: If you die in battle, your active Pal will continue to fight and can potentially kill whatever killed you. Similarly, if you managed to tag a Pal with a Pal Sphere before dropping dead, you can potentially capture it after dying.
• To Serve Man: Some of the NPCs you come across warn you that Pals can be dangerous and will happily eat humans. This can actually be seen in-game; if you kill a human enemy in front of certain carnivorous wild Pals like Nitewing or Direhowl, they will start eating the corpse after combat ends, which will actually despawn the corpse if they're allowed to finish the animation.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Version 0.1.5.0's revamp of the heat system accidentally introduced this into the game. Now, using (or even being near) Fire-elemental Pals or Ice-elemental Pals without the proper protective armor will harm you. Same applies if you've crammed a room full of campfires/furnaces for crafting.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: As a rule of thumb, human enemies do not drop their weapons for you to use, only ammo at best. You have to actually research weaponry to make and use it. Averted for the Syndicate Grenadiers, though; they may drop a grenade if you kill them.
• Useless Useful Spell: You can catch humans in Pal Spheres, but it's really more for laughs than anything else. They only have one attack (a simple punch), even if they were armed before capture; poor stats; can't be taught additional attacks via skill fruits; lack Pal abilities; and have only the handiwork skill (at level 1). They're useful for filling slots on assembly lines or doing roleplay, but that's it.
• Utility Party Member: Several Pals may be poor at combat but have excellent support skills at the base. Others can be used as mounts or gliders.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Aside from the petting mechanic, the way the narration talks about certain ways of Video Game Cruelty Potential implies that they are optional. ("Be sure not to overwork your Pals!" "You can also sell them off or even slaughter them to eat! That however, is forbidden by law.") A later interview confirms that treating Pals kindly is viable. In-game, Pals have a Sanity Meter that represents their mental state, and they work much better when kept happy than if neglected or mistreated. Even capturing humans can be roleplay flavored this way, as many of the lone NPCs sitting by campfires lament that they are pretty much doomed to be killed by Pals — bringing them to your base, where their only responsibility is occasionally helping with building or crafts and they have access to a bed, hot springs, protection in the form of your Pals, and all the food they want, is definitely a better fate than eventually being eaten by a predator.
  • The Monitoring Stand has an option called "Relax" where your Pals will work slower, but retain their hunger and sanity for much longer.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • This seems to be the whole point of Palworld. You can beat up Pals in battle (not just in Pal-to-Pal combat, but shooting them, hitting them with sticks, and just beating them unconscious with your bare damn hands if you're willing and capable; in fact, the game does not start you off with any Pals, so this is required at some point), keep them piled up in cages, have them take damage in your place, use them in forced labor, overwork them, sell them, or slaughter them. It's also possible to capture human enemies with Palspheres.
  • If tormenting NPCs isn't enough, within the game's data exists "Raider Spheres" which have the ability to capture other players' Pals. It remains to be seen whether they'll be added into the game officially, but already there are hackers in multiplayer servers acting out their Team Rocket/Cipher fantasies.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • If you are cruel to your Pals, they may revolt against you. Even without outright aggression, overworked and unhappy Pals will work much slower and often simply refuse to do anything.
  • Certain actions, like slaughtering pals for food, assaulting passive NPCs, or capturing humans with Palspheres, are considered illegal. Performing them within sight of other people will get the Palpagos Islands Defense Force after you, and these guys do not mess around.
  • Passive NPCs will fight back if you attack them. In particular, the merchants and Palpagos Islands Defense Force soldiers will draw guns and riddle you with bullets if you attack them or throw Pal Spheres at them. Goes double for the Black Marketeer — not only will he set a very powerful Pal on you if you attack him, he'll also whip out a minigun.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted. The player can use Foxsparks as a flamethrower, which has decent range, pretty good damage output, reasonably high ammunition capacity, and sets enemies on fire for additional damage. Also applies to the flamethrowers used by Syndicate Cleaners and Brothers of the Eternal Pyre Martyrs, as they share the same attributes as the player's own Foxsparks flamethrower.
• Video Game Sliding: The player can slide down the slopes for faster movement. You can also jump and open your glider to turn this momentum into a means of crossing entire lakes or chasms.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • If you get caught committing a crime, the fastest, easiest way to escape the PIDF is to summon your Pal and do nothing. The PIDF spawn near you and respawn if they're too far away, but they won't respawn nearly as quickly if you just kill them. And since your Pal isn't you, it can kill them without raising your wanted status. This means you can fly from one end of the Palpagos Islands to the other and they'll still be in hot pursuit, but if you stand perfectly still, they'll lose you in minutes.
  • Each player can have a total of three bases, but if they join a guild, they are restricted to three bases for the entire guild. The ideal strategy for cooperative players is to never join a guild at all, instead taking advantage of their larger number of bases to automate a larger percent of the game's grind.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • Lily and Lyleen. Compared to Zoe, Lily's tower is located in a more hostile environment and she packs a wider array of skills, many of which are capable of inflicting nasty status effects. This includes Water skills to deal with any Fire Pals you brought along to exploit Lyleen's elemental weakness, meaning that the player has to learn how to tactically withdraw their Fire Pals to avoid them being hit with her Water skills.
  • Marcus and Faleris mark the point in the game where Palworld separates itself from the typical Mon battler, as you can't rely on your Pals to carry the load against bosses anymore. Faleris is permanently flying, so a very large number of Pal skills simply can't hit them, something a player might have been exploiting themselves, and they also mark the point where Damage-Sponge Boss really kicks in as almost no Pal in the game can do the amount of damage required to burn through all their health in ten minutes. Learning the intricacies of gunplay and how to build a Pal team that supports you as opposed to fighting for you is essential.
• Wanted Meter: Similar to Red Dead Redemption games, committing a crime will attract the cops at PIDF to hunt you down, though it's possible to lose them if you can hide away from their radius. Which is, taking cues from Grand Theft Auto games, easier said than done, since they will periodically respawn near you.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: While capturing Pals with Palspheres is acceptable, capturing other humans is stated to be considered inhumane.
• Wingding Eyes: Dead or unconscious Pals will get swirly eyes to indicate their status.
• World Tree: Paldium is stated to be crystallized energy released from the World Tree, with the tree in question visible far off in the distance but currently inaccessible.
• You Wake Up on a Beach: The game starts with the player waking up on a beach, presumably washed ashore.

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