Two of Steam's most-wishlisted survival games launch this month just 5 days apart: Pokemon-like open-world Palworld, and Valheim-like RPG Enshrouded
Jan. 9, 2024Palworld is hard to look away from, and Enshrouded was a Steam Next Fest highlight
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After the customary New Year cooling off period where Steam’s release lineup consists almost entirely of experimental indies enjoying the uncommon quiet, one of the biggest genres on PC is about to kick it into high gear. The survival game space is due for a double whammy later this month withPalworldand Enshrouded, both among the most wishlisted survival games on Steamaccording to SteamDB, now confirmed to be launching less than a week apart.
Palworld was announced a while back, and its core pitch of ‘Pokemon, but with guns’ immediately turned heads, if only through raw weirdness. It’s a creature-collecting survival game that’s also a creature-shooter, creature-besieger, and all-around creature-destroyer. No legally distinct Pokemon (called a “Pal”) is too cute to be pumped full of lead or labor crimes, especially when you can pack 32 gun-toting players into one instance.
Palworld will enter Early Access with over 100 Pals, 350 items, and 70 types of buildings, according to developer Rocketpair. ItsSteam pagealso spells out surprisingly grim automation systems where Pals will “keep working as long as they’re fed – until they’re dead, that is.” Aw. There’s also much cuter farming gameplay where little water Pals tend to your crops. Awww. It’s an eclectic mix of cute and cruel, and it might be the best case study yet for whether the idea of an M-rated Pokemon game actually holds water.
Enshrouded looks and plays very differently than Palworld. It was praised during the latestSteam Next Festas ‘Valheim meets Dark Souls’ – an alluring hook for a promising demo thatbecame the most-played game of the entire November fest.
Enshrouded opens with a more familiar sequence of punching trees and hunting deer, but quickly evolves into a surprisingly robust action RPG with parrying and spells and archery and melee attacks that are actually fun, not just a means to kill boars or whatever. From combat to build crafting, Enshrouded leans much more on RPG elements to flesh out its 16-player survival crafting experience. It’s one of the better-feeling entries to the genre in some time, and after its explosive Steam Next Fest showing, its full launch – well, full Early Access launch – is going to be one to watch.
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