“It would just be Palworld 2”: Pocketpair lead says adding a best-in-class feature from the viral pirate game it’s publishing would be near impossible

Pocketpair Publishing is now involved with a pirate survival game that’s gone viral many a time, called Windrose, but incorporating the pirateventure’s best feature into Palworld is apparently almost impossible.

That’s according to Pocketpair’s head of publishing and communications, John ‘Bucky’ Buckley, who announced the company is handling regional publishing duties for Windrose over in Japan.

Windrose follows the classic build, craft, explore, loop that defines almost every game in the genre. What separates this experience is the pirates, though. You can go from shore, where you’ll be scavenging and engaging in soulslike-y combat, to the big old ocean for some naval fights and swashbuckling action. With friends, if you wish.

Buckley calls it “a PvE pirate survival which, in my humble opinion, is already one of the best in its genre” in a recent tweet. And the publishing boss simply doubles down over on Discord: “More people will mention it post-release, but Windrose easily has the best building system out of any survival game. Ever.”

After a fan suggested that Pocketpair should incorporate this best-in-class building system into its own survival game, Buckley basically said the idea wouldn’t be feasible without the studio all but starting from scratch. “You’d have to basically remake Palworld to do that,” he explains. “At that point it would just be Palworld… 2…lol”

There’s no release date for Windrose just yet, but the ambitious oceanic romp is set to make an appearance at the Triple-i Initiative showcase on April 9.

Windrose itself has had no trouble attracting eyeballs without partnering with arguably the biggest survival game around. After a widely talked-about demo and impressive showing at Steam Next Fest, the game managed to amass over 1.5 million Steam Wishlists. You can still try out the demo until Windrose eventually sets sail to Steam Early Access.

And even though Palworld won’t be borrowing from Windrose’s promising building systems directly, the monster-tamer’s incoming 1.0 release is still being hyped up as something special. The ever chatty Buckley recently told GamesRadar+ that Palworld 1.0 is going to be the “survival crafting game everyone always wanted.”

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