With five million sales under its belt in just five days, Palworld developer Pocketpair all of a sudden has the kind of money most early access developers can only dream of. Unless Pocketpair starts lighting yen bills on fire in the street or makes a bad investment in Bored Apes, it should now have the runway to keep working on Palworld for years in early access.
So what is the studio planning for its "Pokémon with guns" survival game? Pocketpair offered up some of its intentions in a FAQ on Steam and elaborated further on January 24 with an early access roadmap. The roadmap image keeps things pretty brief, highlighting bug fixes and critical issues as the immediate focus. It also plans to implement "improvements to base Pal AI and pathing" as soon as possible.
Here's a breakdown of everything Pocketpair says it has planned for the future of Palworld.
Big feature additions confirmed coming to Palworld
- PvP
- Pal Arena ("PvP for Pals")
- "Trading Pals with players in other world"
- "Major building system updates"
- Raid bosses
- Server/save transfers for transitioning between singleplayer/multiplayer
- Xbox and Steam crossplay
- Steam Workshop support
- New islands
PvP: Probably the most-desired feature here, and the one Pocketpair has offered the most commentary on. The studio says on Steam that it's "currently testing PvP internally and experimenting with different approaches." It sounds like the developer is still working to find a form of PvP that fits with the existing game design. Pals will also get their own form of PvP in an arena.
Trading Pals: Pocketpair didn't elaborate on how trading Pals with other players will work, but it sounds like you won't have to be in the same multiplayer session or on the same multiplayer server to trade; perhaps that feature will go hand-in-hand with its plan to let players transition their save files between singleplayer games and multiplayer servers.
Raid bosses: Not much detail here. Palworld just said there will be raid bosses "that guild members must gather and cooperate to defeat." In the roadmap image above they're described as endgame content.
Crossplay: Pocketpair says it's "working to make this a possibility as soon as possible."
Steam workshop support: This will be added "after launch," and Pocketpair says "we look forward to seeing what sort of mods people come up with." There's already a mod adding actual Pokémon to the game.
Will Palworld add more Pals and building stuff?
In addition to those nonspecific "major building system updates" mentioned above, Pocketpair says it's planning:
- "The addition of new monsters to further the Pal roster"
- "New areas and dungeons to make exploration even more enjoyable"
- "New buildings and items that make the survival elements more pronounced and enjoyable"
- New "technologies"
Based on player feedback in early access, the developers may add new game systems as well. And considering those mega sales, I imagine Pocketpair's plans are about to get more ambitious.
How long will Palworld be in early access?
According to Palworld's Steam page, the game will be in early access "for at least one year."
"Depending on the progress of development, we may consider extending early access or if we are satisfied with the state of the game, officially releasing the game," Pocketpair says.
Will the price go up when Palworld leaves early access?
It's possible, though not definite. "The price of the game may increase at or closer to the official release," Pocketpair says.
How frequently will Palworld be updated?
Pocketpair hasn't detailed a planned cadence for updates. It did release a hotfix on January 19, suggesting it'll be moving relatively quickly to address bugs and issues.
Just a few days after launch the studio tweeted it's received "over 50,000 inquiries," which I take to mean bug reports and crash reports. "The development team is aware of serious bugs that are occurring, such as being unable to enter servers, unable to play multiplayer, and losing saved data, and are currently working on fixing them," Pocketpair says. With that in mind, it may be a bit of a wait for Palworld's first update that adds new features.
