Palworld devs announce Palfarm, a multiplayer farming life sim with less survival game grit and more Stardew Valley energy, days after Nintendo reveals Pokemon farming and crafting game Pokopia

Palworld developer Pocketpair has announced a new game called Palworld: Palfarm, turning its mega-hit survival game into a series that now includes a "cosy" farming life sim that smacks more of Stardew Valley and its many cousins. (Well, I guess we already had a dating sim.)

Palfarm was announced tonight alongside a new collaboration for Palworld itself featuring indie FPS legend Ultrakill. Billed as "bringing the world of Palworld into a brand-new farming experience," Palfarm comes across as a more laid-back sim with fewer dangers and more flower festivals.

"Where's my cosy farm life sim, meow?" a Pal called Cattiva asks in the reveal trailer. "It's just mud and sweat every day, meow." Yes, including the meows in these quotes is paramount.

Palfarm doesn't have a release date yet. Pocketpair only said fans can "look forward to future updates." Palfarm has also only been announced for PC (Steam) so far.

"Move to an island where the Pals live, work together to till the fields, cook, craft, and build the farm of your dreams," Pocketpair says. Palfarm will support multiplayer, so you can also argue with your friends about where each crop should go while building your dream farm. At one point in the trailer, three players on different mounts wander a path lined with cherry blossom trees.

A huge cast of Pals is shown in the reveal trailer alone. Many of them speak to the player and hold jobs in town, like Pettalia the flower shop owner, fisherman Croajiro, or Anubis the blacksmith.

"Each Pal will lend a hand in farm work by making use of their unique abilities," the devs explain. "From sowing seeds and watering to harvesting, Pals make for reliable partners. Deepen your relationships with the island residents and Pals through daily conversation and gift-giving, and you may discover unexpected, special stories unfolding."

You will occasionally need to "defend your farm from some nasty Pals," and the trailer notably features a chainsaw and a creepy Palworld merchant brandishing a gun. The scope of this farm defense is unclear, but it seems like Palfarm may not fully shed the 'Pokemon with guns' shorthand that defined Palworld's launch.

Before Palworld, Pocketpair had released and found solid success with Craftopia, a multiplayer survival action game that also had a lot of farming and base building. With Palfarm, it feels like the developer is leveraging its previous experience and newest IP to fully commit to a new, cozier genre which is a proven hit in the indie space.

Palfarm's announcement notably comes less than two weeks after the reveal of Pokemon Pokopia, a crafting, building, and farming game from Nintendo. In some ways, Pokopia felt like Nintendo acknowledging some ideas that Palworld and previous farming-infused creature collectors demonstrated – farming with your creatures' abilities, customizing a base, terraforming the land – and Pokemon fans have been asking for a game like it for years.

I don't actually think this is a case of devs copying each others' homework, of course; it's more a case of the universe working in mysterious, serendipitous ways.

After all, Nintendo and Pocketpair remain embroiled in a legal battle rooted in various patents, which recently took a strange turn with Nintendo arguing that mods which could invalidate its claims don't actually count as real games. Yet here they are independently making and nearly simultaneously revealing two similarly styled spinoffs that both look very good.

Palworld 1.0 release scheduled for "next year" with "a truly massive amount of content planned" despite Nintendo's ongoing lawsuit – and Pocketpair is "also working on some other things".