Dread it, run from it, the Palworld dating sim is real – and Pocketpair is tripling down with a Steam page starring "Chillet's little sister" and "Yandere Splatterina"

Palworld developer Pocketpair reveals it's actually working on Palworld ~ More Than Just Pals, a school dating sim and visual novel with some, uh, interesting character designs. We all thought it was an April Fools' Day joke, but it has a Steam page now. This thing is real.

Pocketpair announced this game last year, but as the debut trailer also dropped March 31, everyone took it to be an early April Fools' Day joke. This latest trailer expands upon some of the gameplay seen in the original, and there's also a Steam page that explains some of the story behind the visual novel.

The new trailer shows off some of the interactions you can have with anthropomorphized Pals and human students at the Palagos Private Academy. There are several dating sim archetypes, such as the shy younger sibling, a standoffish student who only cares about her big brother, and older students who like the newcomers. The trailer itself has to be seen with your own eyes. It's hard to put into words.

Pal♡world! ~More Than Just Pals~ | 2nd trailer | Palworld | Pocketpair - YouTube

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What I will say is, one of the characters is referred to as Chillet's little sister and loves to be pet with "the habit of letting out a sweet, 'Ahhhh…'" when you do. There's also a yandere Splatterina, and, separately, a Loveander body pillow giveaway competition that you can enter now on Twitter. The pillow is "the perfect gift for friends, family, loved ones and enemies," says Palworld community manager Bucky.

The joke of turning a non-romantic game into a dating sim has been used for a while now – Dead by Daylight did it in 2022 – and some fans of the genre were annoyed when this was first announced, thinking it was yet another studio poking fun at the type of game they enjoy. Hopefully those fans will be glad to see that the Palworld sim is actually a real thing.

Bucky tweets: "You all kept asking for it so... here it is! The Palworld dating sim Steam page is live! Along with a nice new trailer showing off some more of the characters! Good idea? Bad idea? Who cares! Someone will be happy."

Bucky also recognized at GDC that there is "a very large and very vocal community of passionate individuals" who would love the chance to date Pals in-game. Eliminating doubt even further, he added that "we teased a totally not real, or maybe real, Palworld dating simulator last year that's slated to release this April Fools', maybe, or maybe not. I guess we'll see." See we have. It's real.

Palworld ~ More Than Just Pals is currently in development, but no release date has been given just yet. Given that Pocketpair has been working on Palworld updates, maybe the developers just haven't had the time.

I'm not sure how to cleanly segue off of a discussion about a Palworld dating sim, so how about you just check out some games like Palworld so you can get more of your base-building and creature collecting fix while you wait for Palworld ~ More Than Just Pals? Thanks.