The custom animations really paid off. They totally carry the whole game. The way the Pals move and react to being pet, the way they work, etc., give it so much charm and make you feel so connected to your Pals.

Simple answer. They gambled BIG on a truly experienced engineer who only knew Unreal Engine, so PocketPair changed the engine from Unity to Unreal, which PP didn't really understand, so much of that original concept had to be "scrapped" due to the assets they had in Unity no longer being usable, until perhaps they recreate them in Unreal.

I think the reason he put out this "devblog" was actually the same reason why you said, "it was a memoir". The company was spread thin just like what you have said, and when the budget was used up, Palworld would be released either way. He is just trying to put everything out for the public to know what really went down when trying to make the game. It's actually quite brave. He didn't know whether the game would save them, or bankrupt them entirely. Kudos to this team.

Palworld is lightening in a bottle. Stars aligned kind of stuff. I am glad it did though.

"makes himself sound incompetent and gives credit to his team" Holy shit...you mean...like...a real leader?

The fact that they also dodged the Unity debacle last year because they switched to Unreal Engine. It's almost like fate wanted them to succeed. The game's at least a 9/10 if not a 10/10 once they iron out the bugs and glitches.

it's possible that if they stayed on Unity, this game would just be "Craftopia 2", it would still be fun and popular but not an insane success like now those 100+ monsters really help sales

so the artist got rejected 100 times, then decided to do 100 pals now thats the spirit haha

After watching this video, I realize that Palworld was just *destined* to exist. It could've went wrong at any point during development which would stop the games release, and yet here we are!

Mr. Matsutani is now a highly valued and very well-paid employee.

I've read the blog from the CEO, it definitely has a vibe of finality to it. He's very open that they spent all their money on developing Palworld, they had effectively zero remaining funds by launch day, and if it flopped they would be bankrupt.

The woman who designed the Pals is awesome. Her designs are just more of what creature capture game fans love. The really cool similarities make for interesting adventures. 😊

That's the kind of openness and honesty the gaming industry needs more of. The double fine documentary series is another example.

The first trailers remind me of The Day Before actually. But instead of hoding everything and calling everyone haters, this company's CEO talked openly about it's development and the game is actually fun.

"the first Version was Unity" - anyone who's been on the Internet last Year can tell that was a wise decision and someone from inside the industry saw the writing on the wall early.

They could seriously make a documentary on the development of this game considering how crazy it is and the amount of miracles that happened in the production and I would watch tf out of it.

he did the smart thing, he addressed what he thought would be the talking points. It does come across as a "oh well, i tried, so long" letter, but I think it was more of an effort to be ahead of bad press after launch of Early Access. If you think someone is going to down-talk you by pointing out you are short, you introduce yourself and say "yup, i'm REALLY short"

so they basically took the most risky option hoping for it to pay off and it actually did this is a good example of risk vs reward

Necesity is the mother of invention

it's quite incredible the fact that they plan to pump palworld money until they go bankrupt and release it and hope for the best wether its goodbye world or its hello you made one of the greatest game ever made and for me they deserve this success and i hope they polish the game in future updates.

I can tell you about a company that flew much closer to the "legally distinct sun". Nintendo. Donkey Kong vs King Kong was an actual court case and many of Nintendo's allies were trying to make deals to get out of legal troubles over it. If Donkey Kong is legally distinct Palworld is just fine.

Palworld might not be as big as other company games; but it has that heart. The heart and passion of making a fun game and an even more exciting world; even in it's early access it has it on full display. When I was a kid I saw the dawn of the global release of pokemon, sonic 3, digimon, monster rancher, etc... and they had that passion and dedication to make something truly immersive and fun. Pokemon might of released with loads of merchandise to push it's popularity but it was the fans that spoke out their love for it. The same love I see for palworld right now. It wasn't something small or a phase; it was the planet saying "we want this" in unison. The fact palworld had all these problems during it's development and still came out is proof that it was meant to come out. In fact, as much as I hate comparing it to pokemon since they are clearly different games; people (even pokemon fans) seem to forget that pokemon started the same way in japan. It was an idea that wasn't even funded, so gamefreak worked on games like Mario & Yoshi to help fund pokemon and even then Nintendo didn't like it; yes that's right. Nintendo didn't want to take the risk, but with some clever money management and a friend on the inside giving advice; they released it and it was a success. Just like Palworld. A dream made reality.

You really know someone has humility when they will tell you themselves that their work is the result of a miracle and the expertise of others. Even moreso when they list the strokes of luck that actually did it. I hope the Palworld team can work on patches without having to crunch now that it's an overnight success.

That CEO actually seems like a good guy. There are of course some red flags like their budgeting, but hopefully they have learned all the necessary lessons. He pays due respect to his team, which tells me he’s worth listening to.

This video has me both scared and excited for the future of Palworld

Since Palworld is still in Early Access I doubt they will outright abandon some of the "Scrapped Content" from the 1st trailer. For now they're focusing more on the roadmap and be more familiar with the Unreal Engine. Who knows, maybe all the features and assets from the 1st trailer will be added back after the game is well-optimized before stepping out from its early access status.

I translated some of it Pocket Pair, a game development company, shared their journey towards the release of their game "Palworld" on January 16, 2024. Despite the challenges of being industry outsiders with no professional game development experience, they managed to create a unique game after three years of development. They emphasized that having money doesn't guarantee the creation of an interesting game. Their journey included several "miracles" such as switching game engines from Unity to Unreal Engine 4 without prior experience, creating over 100 monsters without motion experience, and managing to finish the game with a tight budget of about 1 billion yen. They also highlighted a story where a rejected job applicant ended up in a crucial position for the game's development. Their first game project failed to release due to the inability to find a publisher, underscoring the difficulties faced by newcomers in the gaming industry. This narrative showcases the resilience and creativity of Pocket Pair, overcoming numerous obstacles to bring Palworld to life.

I have been in their Discord since I first heard about Palworld a few years back... I never had a doubt if this game would release. They have ALWAYS been upfront with everything along the way. They deserve ALL of their success! I can't wait for them to hone their skills more and provide us with more content! Nice video!

this is a beautiful story that shows the reality of indie game development, with all its lack of planning, reworks and insanity

This game is the epitome of “fuck it let’s do everything wrong” and still succeed

is there even a way to get any more indie company than this entire situation

as someone who played their last game a lot i had no idea this game was coming until it dropped

His article is a confession letter it’s very old school Japanese that to humble them self. it’s like old school Samurai self sword sacrifice. Meaning he put is all in to the game and hope someone understand why and how much he put in to it and please except it like samurai taking the sword to sacrifice him self as warrior.. that what I can tell this, feels a homage to Japanese style of working how Japanese tend to overwork them self’s.. I mean that’s what I get out of that article he wrote and has that feel to it..

Given how the CEO wrote the 'devblog', it really semmed like he just made the biggest gamble of a lifetime. Basically played a literal 'high stakes' game, esp in hiring and choosing the staff

I think the Metal buildings, deeper story, carts, rockets and more from the earlier trailers are more than likely to come into play later after the game is optimized.

I honestly really love the success story of Pocket Pair on this one. They truly deserve the success that they've gotten with PalWorld and honestly I can't wait to see what the future of the game will be like.

This is amazing. It really reminds me of how games were developed in the early days of gaming. All risk with no guarantees. It's no wonder this game is so good.

now they have money, I hope they hire a writer for a proper story line just to give a kind of purpose other than slav- I mean catch them all, like building an army to take off that island to find out that a country has been attack by the syndicate by the Pal they take and expriment on, fight the syndicate and save the day. The game just 60% complete so we have more room for hope,

We've seen "what would've been", now we can see "what could be" - And I'm glad to be part of this timeline

As an insanely invested Craftopia player I was excited that they decided to change engines since Craftopia was way too buggy, then when Craftopia changed to seamless many many problems still plague Craftopia to this day, insane lag bugs galore. So In my opinion what they learned from Craftopia made them decide that they needed to change engines so Palword wouldn't face most of the same issues.

Basically the old version of palworld is the closest version to Craftopia that there was, since they are from the same devs

This is such a good video! It's good to hear somebody articulate the likely truth that so much of what Palworld is, was born out of either necessity, or simply being the only available choice - experience, talent and time constraints all considered. It's wildly uncommon to read a blog post that's so candid...there's also something inherently Japanese about the matter of fact honesty. It reminds me of the interviews in NoClip's FFXIV documentary (also great videos, super recommended!).

i am proud that they made a bag out of this insane effort! Good Job PocketPair !

11:48 my guessing is because these are just some rookie indie dev who have low expectations on this game so obviously they are so open with this things

Can we just be honest about one thing, the reason the world is realistic and have clashing styles. Is most likely due to lack of artist(s) to draw and implement a world that fit the style, so they let more standard unreal assets carry the brunt of the work just purely due to a lack of manpower and time. Its not really a big mystery lol

This is such a crazy story! Thanks for the video

this was an amazing video to watch. thanks for making it. very interesting to hear about the behind the scenes of palworld's development.

Great coverage. I had to pause a lot so I can read. It showed enough. Your statements were pretty good. This was a great video. Thank you.

TBH the more I play Palworld the less I think the monsters are copies of pokemon. Sure, some are too close to ignore (direhowl, fenglope and boltmane jump to mind), but the rest I honestly think are too different to call copies. If anything, I feel the Pals closely remember earlier Pokemon, and that's good IMO as most pokemon from the last 4-5 gens look terrible. Also, some Pals have such a good design like Shadowbeak and Ragnahawk, top tier stuff, I genuinely laugh when people focus on the "similars" and ignore all the awesome original designs.

There’s always a couple games every generation that have a story like this. Another “miracle” game was subnautica (first one) and it became one of the most popular games in its genre. I do love these types of stories and as an indie developer myself, it gives me hope. However, I think the CEO refers to them as miricles because they were nothing short of a miracle. Most games from developers that aren’t known WILL fail sadly. Palworld succeeded but hundreds if not thousands did end up failing. Anyone of them could’ve been as big as palworld but goes to show you how important it is to try to support these devs and not just the triple A devs that are okay with selling the same game every year because they know people will buy cause of name alone. One day, all of gaming might just be one type of thing and innovation and creativity will be lost

I see why they removed the earlier trailers because seeing them again is making me remember why I wanted the game in the 1st place and I don't see it as in depth as the trailer. Hopefully with the updates, they get back that depth of gameplay that was showcased in the earlier trailers.

Just the total feel of the game feels as how he described it. Feels like everything was just thrown together by talented people to make things work. And it actually worked and fun!

such a good video, crazy this doesn't have more views

Great video ! The only thing i'd have to point out are some comments you made about the game that felt as if you were reviewing a "final build" while the game is still in early access (although that term kinda lost its meaning over the years) so hopefully lots of things will be added to more accurately represent what the game showed during the latest trailers

It's really nice to finally have a definitive "Here's all the info on Palworld and its development" video without any speculation or hate mongering, just an actual objective look on how this game miraculously came to be and clearing up a bunch of misconceptions (Some of which even I still believed). Wonderful work, hopefully this becomes to go-to source to link to when people ask about Palworld.

That was very interesting, thank you. I respect the CEO for being humble. I really hope a lot of featuresfrom early trailers will happen eventually. The castles, the giant whale, the indoors infiltration missions...

They scrapped alpha version from using Unity, to straight Unreal Engine from zero with whole bunch of pendrives.

damn 3 months and 5 people for that first ever palworld vers was alr insanely good😅

It's honestly crazy how many pals there are. Very impressive that they managed to do it.

Excellent video with phenomenal research.

Wow, it really is a miracle this game actually came out & turned out better than what they did. I'm so glad they switched to Unreal Engine because it's way better than Unity. The people they hired are goated.

Honestly I am so glad that Palworld did so well hopefully this opens up more risk taking for games.

Great video! Thank you for putting all this info together for us!

Great video and editing, thanks for breaking it all down

You can tell the CEO and team are from Japan. They have honor and respect for each other and others. A quality you don't see in the west much anymore.

I love the Japanese and their goofy antics. No other nation could have produced something great with such unhinged methods

In the before times, this would have made for an amazing 10,000-word article in a magazine. Thank you sincerely, for publishing this amazingly detailed video about this insane story.

I'd love for there game to be successful for years to come. I think they have something special in there hands right now.

Now that the game is ultra popular, I wonder if they'll be able to hire more people and add back some of those things that we saw in the trailers. I, for one, would love to harvest organs from pals (because collecting resources is so damn time consuming)

Holy **** , they put their fate into this freelancer engineer to finished their game.

I hope the final form of Palworld is something close to some of the content in this trailer. That looks awesome!

Amazing and informative video. Love PalWorld and hope PocketPair keeps updating the game.

Hi has 3 options, 2 is ok and 1 absolutely insane. His got insane option and win.

A good game by good people who actually listen😅😊

"I don't think anyone has flown this close to the legally distinct sun" lmao I love this line.

What a great video, felt like almost a documentary to Palworld.

You keep talking about these features from the trailer that aren't in the final game. But the game is only early access v0.14 still has a long way to go before final version. If you compare Minecrafts betas to what it has now, the game was no where near complete.

Obviously from the trailer during their unity years , there are some story progression or quest in it. Instead of raiding boss tower or syndicate thugs open camp , player need to raid syndicate facilities and destroy the buildings much like max payne style.

best Palworld related video i watched yet, super interesting, inspiring aswell, love the game so far

Well done, what a great video and research! Cheers from your new subscriber!

Apparently, that version turned into craftopia...luckly

Such an interesting story o.O

The tone of the narrative shared by Pocket Pair about the development and release of their game "Palworld" is reflective and inspirational. It conveys a sense of perseverance, resilience, and triumph over adversity. The story highlights the challenges and setbacks the team faced, such as being industry outsiders, switching game engines without experience, and facing financial constraints. Despite these obstacles, the team's dedication and innovative approach enabled them to create a unique and engaging game. The narrative also touches on themes of underestimation and the unexpected success of individuals who were initially overlooked, adding a layer of inspiration to the story. The overall tone is one of determination, celebrating the team's journey from amateurs to creators of a game they believe to be incredibly entertaining.

8:55 Bro I had to pause the video, as someone who's been a developer for 15 years, I audibly gasped. Interesting hearing about these other enterprise-grade version control suites

Moving to UE5 was a key decision for Palworld. The game is beautiful and I doubt it would look anywhere near this good in Unity.

They really bet everything they got to make this game Now i feel a bit sad because i know there are other game out there risk it all and failed in the end

Video was very well done mate.

You hit some of my sentiments about the game exactly. I've been following Palworld since it's first original trailer and would share it with friends on discord. I knew they were behind Craftopia but, because of that I really thought Palworld was something I really wanted yet never thought it would be executed well. Just like one of the early-early access missing way too much to even have fun with. This whole thing seemed like a pipe dream. Though a lot of it was gutted and started back from scratch due to Unreal, I never imagined it's current gameplay loop would ever garner this much popularity. I'm looking forward to future updates now that they have the money to improve this game further. I'm sure we'll end up with something much closer to the original product in the future.

I actually think the pal designs are a really big part of the success. Part of why people like the game is the cute cartoony creatures. It even makes it more fun when the game allows you to do terrible things because the player doesn't want to kill or enslave these cute creatures a little bit. Since pokemon also has cute cartoony animal based monsters for you to catch I don't think they could have done much more to be original. The designs are actually quite original when restricted to this narrow design space.

God damn deserves to be a millionaire. Good job man

I love the Palworld we have now, but honestly, the old version looks very intriguing.

Damn, that first trailer looks really cool tbh. I hope some of those features get implemented in the final game, or maybe a sequel, or a dev team taking notes on how to make their own innovative pocket monster game.

Does that mean...... Nintendo cant sue palworld?

It's unrealistic to say that they should have made the pals fully original. Since it's almost impossible to make anything original these days. They could have made a normal-looking fox and people will still say it's copying Pokemon. Even a lot of Pokemon are not even original.

amazing video gmedley, this slaps

I remember that trailer! It was awesome! I do wish they could add back ni some of the animations, sheep shearing, machine farming, etc.

Game hasn't released yet. It's only in Early Access.

This goes to show that if Pokémon/Nintendo/Gamefreak could’ve done anything at all about this they would’ve. Microsoft even signed them on to drop on Gamepass and somehow twitter thinks Nintendo didn’t know about that.

I would have loved the more brightly contrasted colours for the environment for sure as I find it aesthetically pleasing.

Unity CEO was probably the biggest reason for the switch to unreal engine, these guys have kept a large amount of their money that Unity would of taken from them.