One of the biggest hits, and biggest surprises, for the game industry in 2024 so far was Palworld. Developer PocketPair released the survival game described as "Pokemon with guns" in mid-January for PC via Steam and on the Xbox, with day one Game Pass support. It became an instant sales success, with the developer stating that 25 million gamers had checked it out within just one month after launch, including 15 million Steam players, who had to pay for the game.
While PocketPair did post a road map for future updates for Palworld, until now it had mostly concentrated on fixing the bugs that were discovered in the game since it launched. Today, as part of the Triple-i Initiative indie game streaming event, it released a very brief teaser trailer showing off one part of that roadmap: Palworld Arena.
The trailer, as posted on YouTube, shows two human and armed players, each with three of their "Pals", battling it out in a third-person shooter style match. Here"s how Pocketpair describes the mode:
Battle against other players, pitting both yourself and your pals against them. Train the strongest Pals and defeat all your rivals.
That"s obviously an extremely tiny amount of info about the new Arena mode; there"s no word on when it will be added to the game, other than sometime this year.
Some of the other features that are part of the Palworld roadmap that have not been added yet include crossplay between Xbox and PC (via Steam) players, along with "Server Transfers and Migrations", "Improvements to the Building System," and "New islands, Pals, Bosses, and Technologies."
Earlier this month, PocketPair did update the game with a small but promised new feature, as it added its first end game Raid Boss fight. Hopefully, we won"t have to wait a long time before the Arena updates become available.