The internet is wrangling with the fact that the next game from Palworld developer Pocketpair looks an awful lot like the 2017 indie mega-hit Hollow Knight. Called Never Grave, it’s a Metroidvania roguelike with style and gameplay familiar to those of us waiting for Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight Silksong.
With many pointing out Palworld’s Pokemon inspirations, the next game from Pocketpair is now being compared to one of the best Metroidvania games ever made, Hollow Knight. According to Never Grave’s Steam page though, it also has an enemy possession system, base building, and multiplayer, with all of these mechanics not present in Hollow Knight itself.
We’ve put some screenshots of both Hollow Knight and Never Grave side by side, each taken from their respective Steam store pages, which you can view below.
Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe has also talked more generally about using inspirations in Pocketpair’s games in an interview from a few years back, with part of the focus being on the time he went to a Nintendo Game Seminar and what that taught him. The following has been machine-translated.
“I’ve always loved Nintendo games, and that hasn’t changed. I also deeply respect [them],” Mizobe says in a 2022 interview with Wired Japan (via Jon Cartwright). “However, when it comes to making games, Nintendo has a strong philosophy of creating new and unique games with high quality, and this was questioned at the Nintendo Game Seminar.
“On the other hand, I have a deep-rooted desire for my work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible, and to that end, if there are good ideas in the world, I pick them up, and I don’t necessarily have to be particular about originality. I’m thinking about it. I want to make it more casually. I think it would be a good idea to create things in a way that just jumps on what is trendy (lol).”
You can find Never Grave on Steam right here, if you want to see more of the game for yourself. It’s set for release in the first quarter of 2024.
We’ve also got a complete Palworld guide if you’re playing it, alongside some of the best Palworld weapons and all you need to know about Palworld Paldium fragments.
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