As a long-term Pokemon fan, I was eager to jump into Palworld as soon as the title hit early access, and I was quickly pleasantly surprised with both how relaxing the game could be; as well as how much chaotic fun it allowed. It was like a see-saw between shenanigans and tranquility, flipping from getting into trouble against fiercely overpowered Pals, to harmlessly gathering resources and setting up my first house at the Base.
However, I quickly learned that this game was one of many to entertain my inner chaos gremlin. You see, I’ve also been a bit of a menace when it comes to certain titles, as I just love operating on impulse and getting up to absolute mischief as a result.
For example, in 2023, I tried my first Zelda game with Tears of the Kingdom. What was the very first thing I did in this game? Certainly not follow the story, that much is for sure. No, first of all, I ran into a construct and took it personally when it threw a stone at me. My answer to this? To sling a rock back at the guy for no reason other than my petty attitude, and promptly die in a rock fight, before the game even really kicked off.
Later on in my TOTK gameplay, I had adapted to the ways of Hyrule. However, you can learn from your mistakes, but you can never really take the chaos out of the player. That’s right, I got up to more shenanigans, becoming a mass chicken murderer, in particular. Yes, the rules of Zelda are don’t mess with the chickens, and yes, I drowned every single chicken I saw in a specific area. I just wanted to know if they would float.
Lastly, I got up to perhaps my most impulsive chaotic actions ever in Baldur’s Gate 3 — I’m sure you know where this may be going. Well, on my first playthrough, I decided to do an evil run, playing a murderous, thieving Tiefling rogue. And, well, during Act 1, I took ‘evil’ a step further by slaughtering everyone who crossed my path, simply because they weren’t an origin companion homie. You know, because origin homies gotta stick together — minus Wyll and Karlach, who promptly said peace out after being absolutely disgusted by my actions.
I am sure you more than get the picture by now and can imagine how I may be finding Palworld, a game where you can do literally anything from slaughtering innocent Pals, to enslaving them, trading them off for a bit of cash on the black market, and even trapping other humans under your command. In other words, I have never been so free to follow my chaotic impulses, and Palworld was the perfect enabler of these tendencies.
However, while Palworld certainly let me dive head first into menace mode, I quickly found that as much as it rewarded my impulses, it also was very, very good at punishing them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been playing all sorts of games inspired by intrusive thoughts at the expense of my poor Pals, such as letting my 12 Pals duke it out over the 10 beds available at home base, only putting enough food in the feeder to cover half the workers to see who wins that struggle, and capturing anything and everything I find to lead it into one of two very different lives.
I have a semi-decent work-life quality farming base, where Pals chip in to earn some resources and help me cook meals — you know, the usual stuff. Pretty basic; work, rest, even join my team for an adventure if they’re lucky. And then, in horrifying contrast, I have my doom Base. A Base full of Pals who have been enslaved to a life of work and generating materials, never to see freedom or the light of day again.
What’s that? A Pal is full of medical issues, pfft, I’ll just butcher them for resources and throw another one into the mix to replace them. In other words, farming Base was my ‘attempt to play lawfully Base’, while doom Base was my absolutely unhinged Base of impulsive decisions, minor regret, and murderous intent.
Aside from having two contrasting Bases, naturally, my impulsive decisions and intent carried over into my general exploration and resource gathering, and this is where I was caught off guard by repercussions, as mentioned earlier. You see, more than once I walked across the top of the mountain, and before having access to any glider, saw a big ol’ Egg across a cliff, just sitting there, tempting me. I looked at the Egg, looked at the gap, and went ‘Yeah, I can totally make that jump’ — I could not. As a result, I promptly fell to my death, losing all of the items I had just spent the last six hours gathering.
I was shocked, disgusted, devastated…but also so entertained by the idea of the game testing my impulses like this. A challenge? Well, I would rise to it. I tried to make this jump, and several others, many, many more times with no success. I also love to disregard the possibility of fall damage and take a leap of faith from the top of a mountain to save time, because, well I’m impatient as heck, and climbing down would simply take far too long. Again, I lost everything in my possession and had to set out on one hell of a hike to retrieve these items after respawn.
To say the least, my own chaos has led to much amusement in Palworld, from simple mishaps such as gambling the environment, or even shooting an arrow at a monstrous Pal that is four times my size and three times my player level, looking it dead on the eye and gesturing to it as if we are about to have a top ten anime battle (spoiler alert, I got absolutely rekt).
It was at this point I decided to perhaps invest in ways I could stop hindering myself in the game, or just come to the conclusion that I needed to not follow every intrusive thought that popped into my brain. To my surprise, not only was Palworld a brilliant risk/reward game for me to journey through in my chaotic ways, but had options to make your player experience highly customizable.
Finally, I could stop myself from losing all of my equipment when I so foolishly got myself killed by simply toggling a setting for my world. In addition to this, you can alter damage output to Pals, or yourself from enemies and Pals, edit catch rates, make Eggs instantly hatch, and even increase or decrease the amount of resources dropped from Pals and the environment. I was blown away — this was like everything a Pokemon Nuzlocker would dream of for their playthrough.
So, Palworld, while you have absolutely enabled me in the worst way, slapped me on the wrist when I tried to test the boundaries of risk, and created an absolute mess of a playthrough that is both brilliantly amusing and borderline concerning, I must pay respects.
The amount of thought put into those settings, and enabling them to be editable at any point, on more than one occasion, is just huge. Thanks, Palworld, for everything. The chaos, the creativity, and everything in between. I have truly flourished.
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