Palworld Life-Sim Spinoff Announced Just Days After Pokopia

Palworld exploded onto the scene back in 2024, thanks to a combination of its reputation as “Pokemon with guns”, but also because it was just a pretty good game. In fact, its reputation may have done more harm than good, as developer Pocketpair now finds itself in a legal battle with Nintendo over patented mechanics. It’s a sticky situation, but one that Pocketpair has been meeting head on.

In fact, you could argue that its actions at the moment are somewhat brash, especially with a new Palworld spinoff title that it just announced. Earlier today, Pocketpair revealed via its own official YouTube channel that a Palworld spinoff is currently in development titled Palfarm, and it bears a striking resemblance to a couple of Nintendo titles.

Palworld Life-Sim Spinoff Announced Just Days After Pokopia

For starters, you’ll notice immediately that Palfarm is almost definitely mimicking Animal Crossing, as the trailer starts out with a Cattiva talking to the player via a very Animal Crossing-esque speech bubble. All that’s missing is the weird little made-up language that Animal Crossing has, and it would be one for one. Pocketpair definitely has some stones on it.

As for the game itself, it appears to be a fairly typical life-sim. In the trailer, we see the player building up a town, mining, fishing, and cutting down trees. There’s also a very creepy man threatening to shoot himself, but it wouldn’t be a Pocketpair game if it wasn’t a clone of a Nintendo game, but with a creepy undertone.

While it would have been impossible for Pocketpair to craft a game in such a short space of time, Palfarm looks like a hybrid of Animal Crossing and Pokopia, the Pokemon life-sim that Nintendo announced in its latest Nintendo Direct. If it wasn’t for the Steam store page that went up after the game’s announcement, I’d still be convinced that this was some kind of elaborate joke that Pocketpair is playing.

It seems to be real though, and somewhere, a Nintendo executive probably just woke up in a cold sweat. Putting all jokes aside, I don’t think this will have any bearing on Pocketpair’s current legal battle with Nintendo, though I respect the absolute gall of announcing a very clearly Animal Crossing-inspired spinoff during the entire thing.