Palworld studio Pocketpair has finally spelled out what the deal is with its upcoming roguelike Metroidvania (that looks an awful lot like Dead Cells and Hollow Knight had a baby) because, as one developer admits, "we've been very bad at explaining this."
Long story short, the gorgeous Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse is being made by a now-separate team who used to work at Pocketpair, and the studio's publishing arm, Pocketpair Publishing, is backing this one, even though it was initially revealed with simply Pocketpair listed as the publisher. Phew!
As communications director and publishing manager John 'Bucky' Buckley told GamesRadar+ at GDC 2025, "Never Grave is a tricky one."
Long story long, Never Grave developer Frontside 180 is a group of people "who used to be at Pocketpair" but left because they "wanted to make their own thing," according to Buckley. Having just found inexplicable success with its viral creature-catching survival game, Pocketpair then decided to "bankroll" the project since it had money to spare and already knew the team intimately. "We know you guys. We love you guys," Buckley said of Frontside.
Things get a little more complicated since Frontside 180 still "work from the [Pocketpair] office because everything's there," and the team are "just kind of quarantined off, basically," which is a slightly unconventional setup for a publisher. Studios often have separate teams working on different games within the same space, but they're usually part of the same company, whereas Pocketpair is almost hosting Frontside.
Either way, it sounds like the publisher's philosophy of wanting to pay for cool games to get made indirectly started with Never Grave, which was announced and seemingly signed before the public had ever even heard of Pocketpair Publishing.
"It's a really cute little project, and from the very start, when the character art was being made, everyone was like, 'this is adorable,'" Buckley explained. "'You should definitely just make this.' We're excited to see what happens with it. It's coming along pretty well."
GamesRadar+'s hands-on Never Grave demo impressions called it "fun as hell," even if it does lean on its Dead Cells impression far harder than Palworld ever imitated Pokemon. That said, it's also got co-op and farming and village restoration, so the combination feels novel.
