Palworld’s early access launch was far more successful than anyone could have anticipated. Despite being developed by an independent Japanese team with a shoestring budget, the monster-catching survival game sold like hotcakes on both Xbox and PC. On top of all that, it even became the most successful third-party launch on Xbox Game Pass at the time of its release.Palworldmay have garnered mixed reviews from critics, but it was largely lauded by fans and played by tens of millions of gamers. To this day, the game still has a healthy player base.
Palworldgenerated a lot of headlines last year, but, of course, not all of them were positive. Shortly after its debut, some gamers on the internet accused Pocketpair, the developer behindPalworld, of stealing assets from thePokemongames to create its own Pokemon-like creatures, or Pals. Although many of these accusations were ultimately dismissed,Palworldfound itself in hot water again whenNintendo announced that it was suing Pocketpairfor copyright infringement late last year. This time, the reason for the lawsuit was due toPalworld’s Pal Spheres being too similar toPokemon’s Poke Balls.
The Breeding Systems in Palworld and Pokemon Are Different From Each Other
In spite of all these claims aboutPalworldbeing aPokemoncopycat,the two games are quite differentfrom each other. Not only are they in entirely separate genres (one is a survival game and the other is a JRPG), but the core gameplay mechanics they share operate in distinct ways as well. The breeding systems in both games, for instance, are not actually as similar as they appear.
Breeding in Pokemon is Heavily Dependent on Biological Traits
Pokemon breeding has been a staple of thePokemongames, ever sincethe franchise’s second mainline installments,PokemonGoldand Silver, were released on the Game Boy Color in 1999. In thePokemonseries, players can place two Pokemon of opposite genders in a Pokemon Day Care or a Pokemon Nursery to harvest eggs and hatch new Pokemon. Nearly every modern mainlinePokemongame, except forLet’s Go Eeveeand Pikachu, has had this feature in some shape or form. Breeding is a great way to obtain Pokemon with specific traits that can come in handy during combat, especially if said traits are hard or impossible to find through natural means.
The latest mainline games in the series,Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, don’t have Pokemon Day Cares or Nurseries. Instead, players must have a picnic in order to breed their Pokemon.
Pokemon need to be compatible with each other in order for them to reproduce. This means that they need to share at least one Egg Group (a category that determines biological traits) and be of opposite genders. The only Pokemon these rules don’t apply to, however, is Ditto. SinceDitto can shapeshift into other types of Pokemonand is genderless, it can breed with any Pokemon, excluding other Ditto. Pokemon that don’t have genders, like Porygon and Solrock, can only breed with a Ditto.
Pals Can Breed in Palworld Regardless of Species, But Their Offspring Will Vary
Palworldhas a breeding systemsimilar to the one found inPokemon, but it is different in some major ways. In order to breed Pals, players need to assign a male and female Pal to a breeding farm and give them at least one Cake, which they can craft using a Cooking Pot or an Electric Kitchen. LikePokemon, players will get an egg they can incubate after two Pals have been bred. The key difference here, though, is that Pals do not have to be of the same species or “Egg Group” to mate with each other.
In most cases, the resulting Pals are determined not by the physical traits of their parents, but instead by their parents' breeding ranks, which is a feature that the game uses to determine what an offspring will be. While there aresome Pals that can only be reproducedif their parents are from the same species,Palworldplayers can, for the most part, obtain the majority of Pal variants through interspecies breeding.
