Palworld dev "secretly" brought a game it's publishing to an event that's "not like anything we've been involved in" and reactions are "very positive"

Pocketpair has been slowly been preparing to make the shift from 'Palworld developer' to 'bonafide game publisher' for months now, and the company has not-so-secretly already shown of its first game.

Earlier this year, Pocketpair Publishing went public and announced its first deal with Surgent Studios - the indie team behind overlooked Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: ZAU - which is set to be making a new horror game with funding from Palworld's giant success.

While the division hasn't properly announced a new game yet, communications director and publishing manager John 'Bucky' Buckley told GamesRadar+ that they "secretly" bought one of their signed games to the Game Developer's Conference earlier this month without telling anyone about it or putting any Pocketpair signage on it.

"We haven't put our name anywhere on it, just to kind of see the reaction," Buckley said. "And it's been very, very positive, so we're excited to finally say, 'hey, that was us'." That's not the only secret Pocketpair Publishing has been keeping - the division itself has been making moves and signing games in silence since at least last summer.

"The game we have here is definitely nothing like anything we've been involved in before," he continued. "The game that we've announced with Surgent Studios is a very weird little horror game. It's not a big game. It's quite a small little, short, horror experience kind of thing that I think will really surprise people. I think people will be surprised by the type of game it is, and also the quality of the game. I think it's going to start a conversation about, 'hey, cool games can get made relatively cheap if you want to.' But they're nothing like anything we've done before. Hopefully that will set the tone."

We should be seeing Pocketpair Publishing's first few games soon as Buckley recently said he was "nervous" about their imminent reveals.

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