Palworld director shares his survival sandbox game inspirations: Valheim, Terraria, "and of course, Minecraft"

Palworld director Takuro Mizobe did his homework on the open world survival crafting genre that spawned his Early Access hit.

To clarify, Mizobe recently told Automaton he didn't have to do any research into these kinds of games because he was already such a big fan of the genre, but he does list the ones he played that most inspired Palworld. Chiefly, he credits Minecraft with pioneering the genre.

"I see the open-world survival craft genre as something that was derived from Minecraft," Mizobe said. "You used the word 'research,' but this is a genre I've always adored, so I've played numerous titles up until now – such as Terraria, The Forest, Sons of the Forest, Conan Exiles, Ark: Survival Evolved, and of course, Minecraft.

"In terms of recent hit games, I've played Valheim, the indie title Raft, and Rust (although it is a PvP game). I've also played sandbox titles such as Astroneer and Scrap Mechanic, as well as games with novel mechanics such as Sunkenland."

Of course, the most immediate series to come to mind is likely Pokemon, simply due to the conspicuously similar creature designs, but tonally, mechanically, and in pretty much all other ways, Palworld is a very different game. Pinning down the exact genre is a bit tricky, but essentially, it's a unique mish-mash of survival crafting, monster collector, and factory management game.

Regardless, it's hard to envision a world where the "Pokemon with guns" tagline that's been going around didn't help fuel the unprecedented success that's been Palworld's Early Access launch. Our Palworld review notes that it often feels like "tonal car crash," but that hasn't stopped the game from reaching a staggering 200,000 concurrent PC players in the 24 hours after its January 19 launch, and it's since overtaken Counter-Strike 2's all-time concurrent player record with a current peak of 1.85 million players at once.

Only time will tell if Palworld earns itself a spot on our list of the best survival games.