Palworld Dating Sim Could Actually Be Real This Time, Not Just an April Fools’ Prank

The developers behind Palworld have re-revealed their furry high school dating sim (almost) nobody asked for. It’s called Pal♡world! ~More Than Just Pals~ and was almost certainly an April Fools’ joke the first time it was teased in 2024, but might actually be a real thing now?

That’s been the confused reaction of just about everyone who’s seen the announcement, which includes a complete Steam page and new trailer this time around, as well as screenshots and in-depth descriptions of all the main characters. “What lies inside the mysterious World Tree?” reads the store listing. “An exciting school life filled with cute Pals! Will you remain friends or fall in love? Or dismantle and eat them…🍴 Your dream school romance starts here in this Palworld dating sim!”

Say hello to Splatterina (“I’m good with crafts and medicines”), Nurse Saya (“Huh? No drinking at school…? Don’t be so uptight”), and Katress (“You won’t be able to take your eyes off me”). There’s no release date yet but the Steam page lists a whopping requirement of 4 MB available space.

The dating sim was first mentioned last April Fools’ day, just a couple months after Palworld had blown up on Steam and Xbox Game Pass. It leaned into the base game’s mix of cuteness—adorable Pokémon knock-off creatures—and depravity—forced labor camps—to suggest a romantic spin-off that would turn taboos into memes. Some players claimed to be disappointed that Pal♡world! ~More Than Just Pals~ wasn’t actually real. The Pal’s paw might have just curled to grant their wish.

“Not again this april joke feels sad,” wrote one person on X. “April joke? What? Wishlist now on Steam :)” replied the official Palworld account.

The latest Pal♡world! ~More Than Just Pals~ stunt arrives after the survival crafting sim’s one-year anniversary, and in the midst of a legal battle with Nintendo over patents for certain game mechanics that may have been infringed upon, like aiming and throwing a ball to collect a Pal inside it.

“Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan, so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain,” community manager John Buckley told PC Gamer in an interview earlier this month. “It changed a lot of things for us. We were just about to release the PlayStation version, we were just about to go to Tokyo Game Show, so obviously we had to scale back a little bit and hire security guards and stuff like that.”

Fortunately for Pocketpair, I don’t think Nintendo will want anything to do with Pal♡world! ~More Than Just Pals~.

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