Kids Are Playing the 'Pokémon With Guns' Game, Palworld. Here's What They Think of It

With seven million copies sold in less than a week, Palworld is breaking containment and beginning to get on the radar of young kids.

Palworld, aka Pokémon with guns, is the first major video game hit of 2024. It’s sold more than eight million copies in less than a week, with no signs of slowing. Calling it Pokémon with guns is also misleading, because it’s more of a survival game in the vein of Ark, where there’s a big emphasis on crafting and survival, alongside combat. 

But it’s not misleading to call Palworld, however justifiably controversial because of how closely its characters resemble existing Pokémon creatures, exceedingly popular. It feels like everyone is playing Palworld, even if they’re trying to understand what people are so wound up about. Palworld is life, life is Palworld. There is no escape.

Seven million copies is enough for a game like Palworld to begin escaping containment amongst typical gamers only interested in the meme of it all, and because of its Pokémon connections, start finding its way to younger audiences. Heck, there’s probably a lot of parents who are thinking they can safely play Palworld in front of their children, because you can spend a lot of time doing things at your base that have absolutely nothing to do with strapping a rocket launcher to an adorable cat thing.

Take Travis, for instance, who’s the father of an eight-year-old daughter.

“She plays games with me and my partner fairly often,” he said. “I've been interested in checking out Palworld since I saw the trailer a few months back. I don't hide much from my daughter when it comes to video games as we have talked multiple times about how games aren't real and they are supposed to be fun experiences. She has even enjoyed watching me play Resident Evil at times though I didn't let her watch some of the more gruesome or scary parts, she likes watching me shoot zombies.”

I showed my own daughter the trailer yesterday, while we were lounging in bed before school, and she went oooh and aaah right until the guns showed up and she yelped “Why are they shooting the cute animals?” She did not show much interest in playing, but that was before she realized you could build a hot tub for the creatures to relax in.

So, we’ll see. Currently, the PlayStation 5 is the one hooked up to our family TV, and Palworld is only on Xbox and PC, so there’s no great way for us to play together.

Travis’ daughter had an existing interest, having played Pokémon herself and watched her father play several Pokémon games, too. In theory, that’s an easy leap. Travis told me she “found it amusing that you attack and fight the Pals but also thought it was interesting that the Pals had different jobs and helped you maintain your base.”

Nonetheless, she does not want to play it.

Kids don’t know about the copycat nature of Palworld. In fact, it might be endearing, rather than the existential crisis that’s played out in the discourse online this week.

“All I can say is that she [my daughter] and my son still refer to the Pals as ‘Pokémon’” said Charlie, parent of a seven-year-old son and 10-year-old who’ve been playing the game.

“I mentioned to my daughter the controversy surrounding the game,” said Charlie. “That is, the violence and slave labor aspect. She was incredibly confused by that. She doesn't see it as any more violent than Pokémon, and certainly no more than Fortnite. Forced labor? ‘They're just helping you build.’”

Ah, kids. It should also be noted that despite Palworld’s trailers heavily emphasizing the goofy nature of mashing up Pokémon with weaponry, the opening hours of the game don’t involve guns at all. It’s really more about creatures casting their powers.

But my conversation with Travis and Charlie got me thinking: what do kids think of Palworld? Thankfully, a number of parents in the Crossplay community reached out!

My thanks to the many parents—including Charlie, Tony, Travis, and Brandon—and the children—including Maggie, Mia, James, and Madison—who decided to talk with me, and collectively shared their experiences with Palworld over the past few days.

Take it away, kids.

What do you like about Palworld? What makes it fun to play?

• “I like that it's all the games I like, combined. It's like Fortnite and Minecraft and Sea of Thieves with Pokémon. It has the graphics of Sea of Thieves, and the building and exploring from Minecraft. And from Fortnite it has the guns and glider." — Maggie, 10 years old

• “What I like about Palworld is that you get to catch different types of pals and make them work or add them to your party to fight with them. And sometimes you can ride them if you have a saddle. I think that getting fire fox and using huggy fire [laughs] is fun because you just hold him and after he just breathes out fire on any enemy. ” — Mia, 8 years old

• “I really like Pokémon, and this game is like that, but I feel like almost every mechanic in it is a lot more interactive.  I like how a lot of it is a survival game.  You don't just get to build OR use your pals, you get to mix them together and it's a good combination of two types of games.” — James, 10 years old

• “I like that it has missions to tell you what to do. It’s really fun to explore and find the new creatures.” — Madison, 9 years old

What's your favorite thing that happened while playing the game? 

• "I got really excited when I found out you could ride the Pokémon, when I saw they had a saddle! That was my favorite part." — Maggie, 10 years old

• “The most fun thing that happened while playing it was that we got to go through dungeons together and we got to fight lots of cool stuff and catch lots of cool pals.” — Mia, 8 years old

• “Finding my first pal egg.  I was climbing on these giant angled mountain things, and when I got to the very top I found a large frost egg.  I took it to my base, put it in the incubator, and about five minutes later I hatched a Chillit.  This was great because it was the first Pal I could ride.  It has since been my main Pal I use for everything.” — James, 10 years old

• “I found an ice egg and hatched it into a pal that looked like a ferret.” — Madison, 9 years old

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Hopefully, this is just the start of more kids’ voices being part of Crossplay! If your kid has an interesting observation about a video game, please feel free to write in to me.

There’s every indication Palworld is going to become more popular, not less, over the coming days and weeks. How popular and how far that reach extends remains to be seen, though one teacher told me “we are in the middle of exams right now, and I have heard on multiple occasions that the game has dropped at the absolute worst time.”

The same teacher noted this, however: “Halo 2 game out before a chemistry exam, and let me tell ya. I know a lot about Halo, and next to nothing about chemistry!”

We’ve all been there. The kids are (probably) going to be okay.

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• Palworld seems fine. It’s a rip-off of a variety of different games, but the mixture is executed reasonably well, and I’m shocked how toxic the discussion has become.

• Survival games are not my thing. I’ll be better off if my kid doesn’t get into Palworld, because it means I probably won’t have to play it beyond this stream.

• My oldest hasn’t gotten into Pokémon, but it’s a reading thing. Those barriers are coming down, day-by-day, and it feels like we’re nearly at an inflection point.