Palworld

Based on the 298 most recent Steam reviews

• English reviews: 298, 27 Sept 2026 – 2 Oct 2026

• ▼ Not recommended

  106 h at review106 h total

  2 Oct 2026

  A creature collector and survivalcraft game that is quite mediocre at doing both I've played this game since Day 1 of Early Access. The devs are able to mesh a jumble of ideas into a coherent game, but most of them feel very surface-level. First, as a survivalcraft game, Palworld is painfully lackluster. Weather is non-existent. It's a survivalcraft basic, man. Very strangely, Palworld has a temperature system but no weather. Weather could've complemented that and the elemental interactions that is fundamental to a Pokemon-esque game. Exploration is dull. The landscape is empty. Few memorable POIs. Little that invites you to discover or get lost the way 7 Days to Die, Enshrouded, or Subnautica do. Aerial Pals let you skip much of the land entirely. You can swim with water Pals, but barely any incentive beyond grinding and collect-a-thon. Human NPCs and settlements are terrible. They have improved since EA, but settlements still feel like ghost towns. Across the world, NPCs just stand around. Barely any roaming people outside enemies waiting to be fought. Second, as a creature collector, the game also falters. Combat is basically a numbers game. Very little thinking/strats involved. Bosses are stupid bullet sponges with no clever movesets. Winning means grinding until your weapons are strong enough. Heck, sometimes your Pals are more useful as passive buffs than as actual combatants. This is super painful because the 3D environment could've made elemental interactions much more interesting. What do you mean fire Pals can just swim through water with no effect? Compare this with games like Monster Sanctuary or Anode Heart. Pal breeding is another endless grind and undermines catching. Grind tech to unlock tools, get the right Pals, wait for them to breed, condense the bad products, and repeat. By mid-to-late game, catching and discovering new Pals feels secondary because you can breed the interesting ones anyway. That being said, there was definitely a sense of novelty when I first played it. Directly aiming and capturing Pals feels exciting for the first few hours. Building is clunky, but seeing your Pals work around your farm felt refreshing. The jumble of borrowed mechanics - climbing and gliding from Breath of the Wild, survivalcraft, creature collecting - somehow fits together coherently. The configuration options are also very welcome, so you can tune the game around your preferred playstyle. But ultimately, Palworld feels very surface-level. It borrows a lot of good ideas without developing most of them very far, and maybe only works if you've never played much beyond Pokemon.

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  3 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Games owned: 470 · Reviews written: 49

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  154 h at review154 h total

  1 Oct 2026

  First review so it's a bit all over, sorry 😭 Honestly? A whole vibe. Palworld is definitely a game I think people should check out! Despite it's similarities to another brand lol, it has enough to stand on it's own! The open world? Expansive and fun to explore. Battles? They can keep you on your toes for sure! Variety in creatures? Pretty dang good and they've added a lot since the beginning. I love the progression and how you have to pay attention to your Pal's and attributes for not only base work but combat, mount traits etc. The breeding is kind of convoluted and confusing to me but there's plenty of guides to help! My only nitpick is really just a me problem, being that eventually I do start to get overwhelmed with the need for production and like, planning this long chain of making this, this and that to get to this. But like I said, it's more so that I'm a filthy casual and my brain lags sometimes. Anywho, this game let's me choose violence for almost any answer, which is neat. 100% Recommend checking it out! 🩷

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  2 found helpful · 1 found funny

  Performance

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 1

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  18 h at review24 h total

  2 Oct 2026

  Very much enjoying the game after it was recommended to me. Even after 17hrs I'm still discovering new areas and new Pals. The game is expansive and pretty to look at. It combines all the things I love in a game - cosy farming (sorta), base building, management and some combat with an open world.

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 1

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  88 h at review88 h total

  2 Oct 2026

  Addicting gameplay loop, a bit grindy but worth every second of it, highly recommended

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 2

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  151 h at review151 h total

  2 Oct 2026

  I’m glad this game ripped off a certain game, but did the gameplay better. If I wanted to play a game with turn-based combat, I’d play chess. Anyways, I love this game. It’s a mish-mash of game genres and gameplay styles, but it mish-mashes them together perfectly. Survival game lovers will enjoy this for sure. But it adds something very different and brilliant with the Pals. Having creatures help you out with crafting, farming, combat, etc. is such a great idea. Finding them out in the wild, and making them a part of your team. You can get them to cook, you can use them to give you stat boosts, you can breed with them. Wait, let me rephrase that: You can have them breed with eachother so you can have more pals. These Pals are just such a cool game concept, and I feel they’ve done it so well.

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  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 36

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  51 h at review54 h total

  1 Oct 2026

  sick gameplay loop

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 20

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  144 h at review144 h total

  1 Oct 2026

  Absolute cinema! Palworld is a good game, except it does fall flat in the graphics sometimes. Some things look out of place with the cartoonish Pals because sometimes it's simply just Unreal Engine packs that fit the game for the most part. But that's genuinely such a small complaint. Palworld succeeds in creating a world where you want to run around and find as many critters as you can just to catch them, the simple idea of "I want to catch them all!" is a possible and rewarding idea to have. Starting from a manually ran base to a semi-automated base full of life and work feels rewarding because you can put those pals in your base that you can't have in your party. You can always have the Pals you want around you even without compromising your combat team, something Pokemon has always failed at for me personally. The pals in the game can be upgraded to be as strong as a top tier, though not without having to grind for it through something like breeding. Which personally I don't like, but is apart of most trainers' journey to become the strongest. To become the strongest is to use all the mechanics possible to build the best Pal, best weapon, and best defense. The combat has always been fairly simple but fun, you have an auto battler that you are apart of. The Pals attack for you, but you're still able to command them, and you're still able to attack whatever Pal you're trying to already. You get a club, then a sword, then a stronger sword, then a gun, then a bigger gun, and then you get rocket launchers, laser guns, full mini-guns, and it's a dopamine rush to run around using melee weapons, ranged weapons, and your Pal to destroy everything. Though there are some people you have to watch out for, the tower leaders are the gym battles in this game and they are a challenge if you don't prepare with a good team composition, you can blunder easily if you forget that your strongest Pal is weak against the type of the leader, or that you didn't upgrade your armor so you get downed. You have to prepare and think for them and that's another thing Pokemon forgets about, the difficulty of the games. I know that this isn't a detailed story of MY personal journey, I don't think people want that. But if you don't know if you want this game I would highly recommend it if you like Terraria, Ark, or maybe even Valheim to a shocking extent.

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  0 found helpful

  Graphics

  Gameplay

  Story

  Games owned: 229 · Reviews written: 30

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  72 h at review72 h total

  1 Oct 2026

  One of the most content dense games I've ever played. For the price of this game, you will genuinely NEVER find a game with more to do in it. Highly addicting and incredibly fun. Amazing progression, straight-forward mechanics, as challenging as you make it. 10/10, absolutely love it.

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Value

  Reviews written: 6

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  109 h at review109 h total

  1 Oct 2026

  It pains me to do this, but this has been one of the times where a game I have brutally disliked the optics of has surprised me and become one of the more addictive games in my roster for the year. My friend bought this game for me because it came out as cross platform, and as it is there are only like 45 games to play together on pc with people on PS5 so I decided I would try it even though I have had no prior interest in it, so I only play this game with my friends on PS5 but it has been a great time with tons of funny moments and stress over mechanics of the game shared between us. The parody aspect is something I don't really care for, the whole "it's like Pokémon with guns" argument never really made me care any more than I didn't already, because I never really wanted to shoot a Pokémon to begin with I liked having them as companions that's like the whole point. BUT if ANYONE had told me prior that this game ran almost like a carbon copy for the gameplay of ARK; Survival Evolved, I would have instantly become more drawn in as I spent my childhood glued to Ark. The gameplay is fun because it is basically a mixture of Ark, Zelda BOTW, and Pokémon, with most of the more fun aspects of each taken and put into the game. The gameplay loop itself gets annoying and stressful until you get enough pals to start automating things and there are a lot of points I have reached especially late game where by the point I unlock one new building material to start crafting and get the materials for it ready to use so the late game goals can ultimately get really repetitive and annoying to reach at some points until you figure out all the loopholes around them, I have already leveled up enough to learn the next material, it almost feels gimmicky and hard to pace yourself efficiently. My favorite part is the base building and all of the cool things you can do, I built an all purpose slums style base in the mountains that only extends vertically and my framerate suffers when I visit that base but it's worth it for how cool it looks. There are surprisingly a lot of really cool pals in the game, every once in a while you will run into a walking copyright strike and that doesn't speak to me as much but a lot of the original designs in this game are really good and give the same feeling that a mixture of generations of Pokémon had once given as well. Speaking of performance the game runs really well even on my hardware, some of the biggest issues I tend to have with the game come down to things like crafting speeds, and some of the default settings like the weight, durability, and expiration timers that don't exactly feel like they are of any benefit to keep on for experience in the same way you would experience it on another survival game, the bars all seem to be shorter than you would expect. Overall this game has actually pleasantly surprised me as I expected to fully hate it, but I have come around to enjoy the game very much becoming the main game that me and my console friends have played this year together. (Gifted Game)

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  0 found helpful

  Performance

  Gameplay

  Games owned: 291 · Reviews written: 72

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  11 h at review20 h total

  30 Sept 2026

  Palworld does what Ninten-don't! Palworld has a very very fun exploration/building/combat game loop, and I'm having a hard time putting it down. Strongly recommend!

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 21

  On Steam
• ▼ Not recommended

  75 h at review75 h total

  30 Sept 2026

  The first 10-15 hours of this game are fun. You're exploring the world, catching pals, & building bases while leveling and teching up. After the 10-15 hour mark, my interest in the game started gradually dropping more and more. While this isn't a bad game by any means, it doesn't ever really become much more than what you played at the beginning. Sure, you can automate more which lessens the boring gathering and crafting tasks, but the gameplay outside of those tasks really doesn't get any more interesting. There is a lot of world to explore but so much of it is empty with very few interesting areas. You're going around, finding pals to catch, activating towers with simple, boring hacking minigames, and optionally searching for random eggs/chests/effigies that are randomly tucked in corners of the world. The quests and limited story are just filler and there is almost no music outside of combat. It's really just a turn your brain off, put on a stream or podcast in the background, and run around to make numbers go up type of game. If that's your jam and you want something to keep busy that you need to pay very little attention to, then this is for you. Performance is okay, I experienced hitching pretty regularly when loading into zones and during boss fights. Considering how big this game was and how well it sold I expected something more from than the early game experience expanded to more of the same. Towards the end of the game with the newer content the gameplay loop doesn't change in any meaningful way. Which, I mean sure if the game sold well just continue that I guess but it's extremely uninspired. Later bosses have some light mechanics which makes them slightly more interesting. There are all kinds of quality of life features you can get mods for that could have been added to the game. Not being able to search pals by name in the palbox is awful. Combat from the beginning through the end of the game remains the same. I think now that they know this type of game can be successful I think a sequel could be infinitely better a variety of ways, but that doesn't make what they've created here any more interesting. It checks the boxes of the genre without doing anything interesting or engaging. Fortunately, I was able to play this with friends which made it tolerable. Otherwise, it's not something I would have played further beyond the first chunk of the game.

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  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Story

  Games owned: 2,222 · Reviews written: 184

  On Steam
• ▼ Not recommended

  107 h at review114 h total

  30 Sept 2026

  The ONLY thing that is even somewhat remotely enjoyable about this game is that, the base building AT TIMES can be relaxing, and nothing more. Lets be honest this is a knock off of ARK and pokemon, even though there are some people who will probably disagree, but oh well, you cant please them all. In the beginning it honestly seems okay, but the more you progress through the game, absolutely loses so much enjoyable aspects and just becomes a huge headache. -You upgrade your palbox for you base, but the circle is only so big, but yet the machines and equipment it has you build are huge...there solution...dont make the circle bigger for players, they still need to cram it in this circle and build upwards with tons of floors...dont like that? Still not going to increase the "base circle" , because why would we make it convenient, nope, you can do a couple different palboxes and just keep fast traveling between those. -Spheres...there are different types of spheres, ten to be exact...pal sphere, mega sphere, giga sphere, hyper sphere, ultra sphere, legendary sphere, ultimate sphere, exotic sphere, sol sphere, and ancient sphere. Obviously the first sphere you get (pal sphere) is made for beginning pals, and as you move up in the game, the other spheres are designed for all the other levels, level 80 being the max. The catch rate of these spheres is ATROCIOUS! Theres a person in the discussions by the name of Ryixia (or something like that) who swears up and down spheres cannot bounce once the pals level is 50% or lower, because even the wiki says that (because the wiki pages on anything has always been 100% factual) these spheres, that were matching the level of the pal or an even greater sphere was being used, bounced so many times while we tried capturing, but nope we were told it was because we were making things up, because it had to be our fault that it wasnt working (i.e the right sphere, your capturing ability etc.) when all of our stuff was just fine. And on top of that, some of the pals that were trying to be captured with the right sphere or greater would not go into the sphere for atleast 15 or more capture attempts! With how much tedious work goes into these spheres at times, that is just ridiculous, and makes the game less enjoyable. -You are forced cool downs on your pals abilities, meanwhile enemies can keep spamming you left and right. Or random other pals that werent near you while fighting will come all the way over to you and start fighting you, or shooting you through rocks and walls..because thats fair. -Some raid bosses i.e the Hartalis boss (level 70) can instant wipe you and all 20 pals you have out, if you finally get it to the last percentage and think youre good...think again...he gets to heal himself all the way back up (which is almost 1 mil health btw) and he can change his abilities...totally fair fight right? -back to bases and pals who stay there to do work...the creators incorporated depression and eating disorders in the pals, so dont understand how they thought that was okay, but good job on the creators for promoting that??? -lastly...you finally get to the world tree...yippee...you havent fully pulled your hair out yet...the wild pals and bosses in there are in the 70s, but think again if you think its okay if youre level 80 and trying to use ancient spheres on them...they bounce constantly..ie...you have to find the materials to make more spheres, which two of the materials to make the ancient spheres, you can only see if you drink the tree holy water...only last barely a minute, so better make sure you have a good supply on you or you are s.o.l. The game is super unbalanced, and really doesnt reward you as you progress, it honestly feels like it punishes you more, the work to make things is very tedious, and if you enjoy that, then i guess youll be okay, yes pals do the work at the base for you, but if you need something quickly, it takes forever to make, so better pull up youtube, a book or a tv show or something. But hey...if you try to post a discussion about a question or anything complaining, then you might get the Ryixia person telling you, "then you give up, heres a participation trophy" or say its not working because its your fault, because everyone is supposed to have an experience it the same exact way, and if not, then you are messing up and it has nothing to do with any flaws that are in the game, so shame on you for complaining about anything. Overall...not worth the headache, or dealing with a community that blames you for the games unbalanced mechanics, but they dont want to admit that.

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  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 2

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  262 h at review263 h total

  30 Sept 2026

  This game is a combination of Ark for the creature taming and building mechanics, and Satisfactory for the automation so you can get stuff built while you play the game and explore. It is a fun game to play, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes those aspects of Ark and Satisfactory.

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 12

  On Steam
• ▼ Not recommended

  73 h at review73 h total

  30 Sept 2026

  I came to the realization after about 70 hours that this game constantly strings you along, promising that things get better and more exciting, without ever actually doing it. The initial gameplay loop is very promising; right out of the gate you have a large, expansive world with very well-designed pals with an incredibly large skill/crafting tree. The more I played through the game, the more I kept thinking, "Well, that was a bit underwhelming." The combat is very lackluster; the base management is novel but slowly degrades into number crunching. The towers (bosses) were incredibly lackluster with the exception of the last one, I imagine that was the result of an increase in budget. The game is pretty, but whenever I compared any individual component of it to any of the game's peers, I realized that it doesn't do anything very well. It pads gameplay with a slow increase in grinding; the base management lacks any amount of complexity. The combat is mostly shooting at very predictable or otherwise static Pals outside of some later bosses. They artificially pad the pal count by reskin'ing existing pals into other colors. Nearly a third of them are reskins. It's fine, I guess, but isn't all that impressive compared to anything else it imitates.

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  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Games owned: 380 · Reviews written: 65

  On Steam
• ▼ Not recommended

  357 h at review357 h total

  29 Sept 2026

  Lost my account due to server host not updating and eventually not paying for the server. I intended just to play with a friend which he played with a friend that cause this issue. Losing all progress for hours of gameplay is very discouraging.

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 1

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  107 h at review134 h total

  29 Sept 2026

  Nintendo is just mad that they spent years trying to tell gamers that this isn't what we wanted only to get absolutely thrashed over it. The game play itself is pretty bog standard open world, so nothing revolutionary there, but the legally distinct characters and the design of the game is fun and has a certain charm to it. The sound design isn't award winning, with battle themes cutting in and out sharply, character actions being your bog standard laser beam sounds, and some of the Pal cries feeling like I'm playing Ark. The game play again isn't cutting edge and isn't something you should be writing game of the year submissions for. Overall, the game is solid, and the idea of catching Poke..... Pals and using them for labor has flavors of Ark and other survival games. 8/10 here. It's not revolutionary by any standard, but it's just downright fun and addicting with solid mechanics and a leveling system that feels like you've earned it when you start catching the next tier of Pals.

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  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Story

  Reviews written: 26

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  268 h at review268 h total

  29 Sept 2026

  Pokemon but with guns. Pretty good game. "pals" get stronger over time and they can basically become work slaves, will even become unhappy and depressed. Many of the pals look a little adorable despite the game also being on the more mature end of gaming. One of the only problems i have is i have to fight the building mechanics in this game. Building sucks if you only have a few shapes to build with and you cant flatten out the map.

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Games owned: 179 · Reviews written: 22

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  146 h at review197 h total

  28 Sept 2026

  Graphics: 9/10, when the game runs it runs smoothly but I have had a game exiting crash near daily in the game when visual effects on screen load gets high. Sound: 7/10, average, nothing really sticks out, Boss battle music always is nice. Story: 2/10, bare bones, lot of missed potential for story driven elements to Pal bonding/Pal Cruelty. They have awesome flashy intro cutscenes to the bosses but essentially no interaction with them otherwise. Gameplay: 10/10, the core of the game and gameplay loop is what sets this game apart from other monster collecting games. This is a game that doesn't really need an amazing story because the core gameplay of catching new Pals (using surplus ones for bonuses and min/maxxing the substats and passives with breeding) and building/upgrading your player characters armor/weapons and unlocking Pal exclusive talents for mobility (saddles to ride Pals) is fantastic. Overall: Game crashing bugs and lack of story aside, the core gameplay loop is why Palworld became so popular. I played early access and started a fresh game with 1.0 and felt that it was just different enough to feel worth it, although I wish they would have actually put time into the game for character development. The addition of many new Pals in 1.0 also helps keep things fresh.

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  0 found helpful

  Performance

  Graphics

  Gameplay

  Story

  Games owned: 37 · Reviews written: 1

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  344 h at review344 h total

  28 Sept 2026

  It's good and fun when you ignore most of the lore and story, and are fine sinking A LOT of time into it. The game's definitely kinda janky overall, in my opinion. Doesn't boast the most fluid and satisfying movement, but it's better then some games. Gunplay is... meh. Some guns feel satisfying, though there really isn't any recoil on guns. A janky part of the game is that many guns have really stupid spread. But there's a Pal that's bugged that allows you to have laser-perfect aim, and that's not even its passive. (it also effects shotguns, making them no longer shotguns lol) The models in the game are pretty good. Graphics are pretty decent, you don't usually notice ugly weird spots. What really made me not like the game is the hard content. I wanted to do it, but it feels really wonky to do sometimes and it feels like i have to spend another 300 hours to have the ability to do ONE fight out of several. Funny thing is, i beat the Hard Towers first try easily. Then i spent a long time preparing for an Ultra raid and got absolutely stomped on. If i spent like 5x more time on preparing, i would've beaten it easy, but i just don't want to participate in that particular grind. Speaking of grind, the game can be VERY grindy at times. I think AT LEAST 200 hours of my total time were spent schematic farming/grinding. Personal example; Legendary schematics (aka top tier) have like a 0.014% chance of spawning if i remember correctly. I had somehow gotten so unlucky that i got 4 of the same legendary schematic over the course of many hours, with like 6+ items in the loot pool. Would HIGHLY recommend a mod that reduces the RNG for schematics if you don't want to spend such a unceremonious amount time grinding for them. Story... well... i'm not particularly a huge fan. One of the problems is it feels like there are too many unexplained things for my taste. Like all of the human enemies are like this: "Bad guys are bad guys because bad guys." I decided to create my own lore/story just to make it a bit more understandable for me. Definitely not a game that you play for the story sadly. I can't really say much about Pals and all those mechanics, because i'm NOT used to playing with NPC teams. Overall, i didn't like it too much. It felt like RNG decided too much whether or not a victory was possible. BUT, it is really fun creating crazy synergies with their passives. Take my judgements with a grain of salt since i'm not too experienced in this field. I feel like bases could be improved. Building sometimes can be really tedious and annoying, especially when some hitboxes are absurdly large... and when you can't build something, but you demolish one thing, then build something there, and build the one thing there again and it's fine. Sorry if that sentence was confusing. A little thing that bothers me is that there's no full headgears/helmets, it's all like forehead visors and very odd hats. The only things that can fully cover your entire head is the Terraria helmet and the ULTRAKILL set, which just replaces your entire model. The enemies could DEFINITELY use an overhaul of sorts, especially the humans. They're all unfathomably dumb and sometimes very blind/situationally unaware. I was able to go into a small outpost and free a Pal with ALL the enemies staring at me with their guns pointed at me and i escaped without a single shot getting fired at me. I'm also not a huge fan of how the enemies work in the first place. I'm used to games like Terraria and Silksong where there are attacks that are telegraphed that you dodge. This game has some of that, but it also feels like there are just some attacks that you CANNOT dodge no matter what, which is very frustrating in Ultra raids. Like a boss was charging up a large, long AOE attack. I went behind him, and the boss did a 180 degree turn in 0.3 seconds and obliterated my mount. That attack also lingers for like 2 seconds, so when you roll, you'll just take damage anyway... and the boss's direction homes in on you, so you can't just run to one side to dodge. There's another attack from the same boss that's a HUGE aoe attack, but the damage also lingers just long enough that if you roll to dodge it, it'll still tick you. It also doesn't help that the boss basically teleports onto its target and inflicts the attack instantly with no tells. Sorry for the wall of text... Overall, this game is kinda like Breath of the Wild and Pokemon smashed together with guns. (i've never played pokemon before, but i know it's related.)

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  0 found helpful

  Performance

  Graphics

  Gameplay

  Story

  Games owned: 66 · Reviews written: 18

  On Steam
• ▲ Recommended

  216 h at review216 h total

  28 Sept 2026

  Very fun gameplay loop. I'd suggest this if you enjoyed Ark or other Survival games.

  0 found helpful

  Gameplay

  Reviews written: 5

  On Steam