You might know Palworld for its jaw-dropping player counts, its uncanny resemblance to the world’s biggest media franchise, or its legal battle with Nintendo over that last thing I mentioned. Despite all the hubbub, it’s just a pretty alright survival crafting game full of cute monster buddies parodying (or ripping off, depending on how cynical you are) Pokémon. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose, and now it’s doing its best Terraria impression—though it’s a collaborative effort this time.
The Tides of Terraria update dropped last week and delivered a hefty supply of new equipment, dungeons, and enemies inspired by Terraria, including the Moon Lord boss familiar to anyone acquainted with Terraria’s endgame. More than just a handful of token additions, it’s a pretty big update that seems to substantially beef up its early access build whether you care about Terraria or not.
To that end, there’s also a bunch of new stuff unrelated to the crossover, like a trio of new islands replete with original Pals, a fishing minigame, a salvage system for breaking down sea rubbish, and the new ability to “sleep together with your Pals,” which is a pastime that’s only as weird as you make it.
The patch has players busy as ever befriending and arming their little blorbos, with SteamDB showing Palworld has hit 100,000 concurrent players several times in the last week.
The pairing, which apparently happened because of a cold DM sent between devs, does make a bit of sense. Both games are breakout survival-craft hits from independent developers, and they both feature enough cartoony monsters and lush forests for the aesthetics to have some overlap. While I’m not huge on the glut of crossovers in entertainment these days, an organic collaboration between indie teams is a little less banal than He-Man ending up in Call of Duty or whatever.
Terraria’s set to get its own Palworld-themed additions in the hotly anticipated 1.4.5 update, but no launch window has been announced for that just yet. If you’re keen to give Palworld a shot, it’s going for $22.49 on Steam through July 10.
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