Palworld is a role-play game where you befriend and collect Pal creatures in a vast open world. It takes the Pokemon formula in a new more violent (gun-touting) and bizarre-capitalist direction as you put your pocket monsters to fight, build, farm, and work in factories. It offers an open world where you can care for (or mistreat) the creatures you collect, often with unintended consequences.

Although the core of the game has a more violent feel, this is still a game about hunting down and training your creatures. The open world means you can explore and progress at your own pace. There's an emphasis you letting you use your creatures how you want. This may be with ethical ends, but also less ethical. "It's completely up to you to make adult decisions, just don't get caught." So, as well as battle you can also sell them, butcher them to eat, give them hard labor, pillage, rob and exercise complete mayhem.

As you progress you need to deal with all sorts of environmental challenges. There are food shortages, changeable weather and illegal poachers. Exploring the world becomes essential, and you can use your Pal creatures to get around in a variety of ways, again with the use of your Pals who can help you fly, swim, drive a car, saddle on their back or shoulder.

After venturing out you need to create a home base. Here you can sow crops and create a farm. This leads to various sorts of automation to produce the materials you need. You can also breed your Pal creatures who then inherit the parents characteristics. This leads to creating rare species to tackle the fiercest of foes. There's also a whole area of the game with endangered species that you can poach.

The result is a game that offers a lot of options for play. This can sound like a recipe for disaster in terms of mistreating the creatures you find, but actually the open choices on offer here provide a rare chance to play in unusual ways - without rushing too quickly to right answers or moralistic solutions to the world's problems.