It’s safe to say that both KLab and Pocket Pair are ‘hot right now’ and now the two companies are getting together on a new project as they get set to jointly develop and operate a brand new hybrid-casual game.
Pocket Pair are currently riding high on the success of Palworld, an open world survival craft game in which you tame monsters and put them to work for you. If this sounds vaguely familiar you ain’t seen nothing yet…
The game has earned more than $200 million in its first five days on the market but has – inevitably – become as point of focus for Pokémon makers Niantic who claim that the game extensively borrows their creature designs and gameplay. The similarities are so evident that the game has come to be known as ‘Pokémon with guns’ for even casual observers.
And the potential problems for Palworld don’t stop there. Intriguingly, when you look a little deeper below the surface you’ll spot that Palworld’s heads-up display bears more than a passing similarity to Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with enemies lifted from popular PlayStation franchise Killzone in a landscape strewn with Fortnite-style chests… This is one game that’s really got the lot.
Two become one
KLab on the other hand are perhaps best known as the makers of multi-platform hit 3D action game Bleach: Brave Souls which has notched up a global total of 80 million downloads.
They’re also the creators of the Love Live! School Idol Festival game franchise a game that, while successful, has seen it’s sequel suffer a rockier road to market. For a start KLab handed development of the game over to Bushiroad and their new attempts at monetisation within the game and plans to migrate players to the new version have fallen on deaf ears.
The result is that last week Bushiroad simultaneously announced the global launch of a new English language version of Love Live! School Idol Festival 2 Miracle Live and the fact that the game would be closing a few months later.
Now, both under-the-microscope companies are getting together for a new TBA hybridcasual game that aims to leverage KLab’s “experience in mobile online games” by putting that together with Pocket Pair’s “strength in planning and developing unique games” in order to “deliver an exciting experience to mobile game players worldwide by jointly developing and operating a hybrid-casual game made for smartphones.”
Details as to the exact nature of the game are still under wraps but you can find out more about the proposed collab here.