Show HN: I made a Paldeck website, all Paldeck Pals in Palworld

https://www.paldeck.co/

by kianworkk • 2 years ago

30 54 2 years ago

Under construction...

I've seen a few arguments, but I still don't see how Gamefreak/Pokemon isn't just going to sue the crap out of these developers (Pocket Pair). Maybe they can get away with loosely copying the creatures, but they blatantly rip off the pokeball/catching design/mechanics that are a part of Pokemon's core IP. Maybe someone can tell me I'm wrong?

falcor84• 2 years ago

Is that sort of game mechanic copyrightable/patentable?

The only example of a patentable mechanic I'm familiar with is the Shadow of Mordor "Nemesis" system [0], which is relatively complicated.

[0] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-shadow-of-war-i-pu...

thereddaikon• 2 years ago

Game mechanics are generally not copyrightable. Nintendo did file patents for some mechanics in the newest Zelda game. I don't know how well those would hold up under court scrutiny, bad patents are approved every day. Pokemon's mechanics were also not fully novel, it was inspired by what was already in 1997 the well established JRPG formula.

BadHumans• 2 years ago

Mechanics are cannot be copy-written and there are dozens and dozens of creature collector games that use similar mechanics to Pokemon. Pokemon isn't even the first creature collecting game.

shantara• 2 years ago

Game mechanics and "feel" are generally not copyrightable with a few exceptions, such as the infamous Tetris lawsuit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding,_LLC_v._Xio_Int....

dymk• 2 years ago

Character design is copyrightable however, and a few of the pals are straight up copied with the ears tweaked.

swashboon• 2 years ago

Game mechanics are not copyrightable.

StephenSmith2• 2 years ago

But character Design is. Here's a good summary of just how close a lot of the characters are.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1749183059877085396.html

snowram2• 2 years ago

Palworld creators designed their models to be as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct. It is so genius I wonder why no one has thought about doing this before.

rantallion2• 2 years ago

as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct

I'm definitely not an expert on the matter, so this is just curiosity. How can something be so similar that the average person looks at it and thinks it's a Pokémon clone and not count as a derivative work?

yungporko5• 2 years ago

nintendo are the most overly litigious company i'm familiar with, if nothing comes of it then i guess it must mean they don't think they have a winnable case

whythre2• 2 years ago

Or the gears turn slowly… but either way I hope palworld is able to do their thing.

pjc50• 2 years ago

I do wonder how this game became quite so successful - it seems to be an indie overnight success despite incredible cheapness and a certain amount of ripoff?

iinnPP• 2 years ago

I imagine the impact of big name streamers killing their pals and or people helped.

This tranalates directly (for me) to a lack of hand holding and censorship.

ihuman• 2 years ago

Their previous game (Craftopia) did well, and people have been looking forward to this since the first announcement a few years ago

thinkingtoilet• 2 years ago

From what I've read, there is a massive amount of disappointment with the previous Pokemon games. I haven't played them but if you read about what the community thinks it's almost entirely negative. They feel like there is no effort put into making those games truly great. This game, apparently, is close enough to Pokemon to scratch the itch and is done well enough. That doesn't explain all the popularity but it explains some of it.

bluetidepro4• 2 years ago

First off, look into how much IP/character design Pokemon stole from Dragon Quest. Pokemon isn't the "og" of this style. Also, the Palworld creator is already known for this style of "rip-off" game. Their other title, Craftopia, was a game they basically ripped directly from Zelda's Breathe of the Wild. They also have a title, Never Grave, which is basically a rip of Hollow Knight. They seem to know how to toe the line without getting sued.

yungporko5• 2 years ago

a lot of the original pokemon were blatant ripoffs of dragon quest's monsters too

rideontime7• 2 years ago

This is the first time I’ve heard Pokémon accused of ripping off Digimon, the Tamagotchi clone released in 1997 that pivoted to becoming a Pokémon clone afterward. Or do you mean that later generations of Pokémon ripped off Digimon?

kimbernator• 2 years ago

Nearly every element of Palworld seems to be a very blatant imitation of another popular franchise.

- Pokemon, obviously.

- The text when you enter a new area, the fonts, etc all scream BOTW/TOTK to me (among other things to a lesser extent like the into sequence and climbing mechanics).

- The immediate visual of a larger-than-life tree looming over the world is evocative of Elden Ring, and to a lesser extend the emphasis on dodging is very similar to fromsoft games.

- Basic crafting/base-building mechanics from every other early access game released in the last decade.

I'm still really enjoying Palworld, I don't want to sound like I'm being overly critical. It's fun to have all of these elements combined into a fun game that people will forget in a few weeks. It's just obvious that there wasn't a ton of original thought put into the game. It also lacks a lot of very basic features relating to multiplayer progression and team mechanics.

rideontime7• 2 years ago

The “looseness” of the copies is up for debate. Comparisons of the 3D models against the latest Pokémon games’ models have raised a lot of suspicion: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/palworld-pokemon-pl...

HideousKojima2• 2 years ago

In addition to the already mentioned Digimon, there are already several other games with similar styles and ideas, like Yokai Watch or Robopon.

tourmalinetaco2• 2 years ago

Nintendo has no leg to stand on and they know it. Otherwise they would have acted immediately, just as they did for the PalWorld Pokémon mod that was foolishly shown off before being publicly released.

bluetidepro4• 2 years ago

Controversy of PalWorld aside, this site is very clean and nicely done! Great work!

kingbirdy• 2 years ago

This seems like a premature launch, there's nothing on the page that's useful when playing the game. It would be great to actually see what the skills do, their work abilities, and all the other info that's available in the game's paldex, or especially to get info that's not actually available in game like regional distributions.

whythre2• 2 years ago

Can’t believe they just straight-up have ‘Anubis’ as one of the monsters. I hope the Egyptian pantheon sues them into the ground.

roosgit• 2 years ago

Where did you get the images from? I have a small project in mind.

canadiantim• 2 years ago

Anyone figure out how to play palworld on linux if the steam version fails?

tourmalinetaco2• 2 years ago

It only needs C++ runtimes alongside Proton, so far it’s worked flawlessly for 8 hours of play.

bdcp• 2 years ago

Whitelist this domain: telemetry.palworldgame.com

ziml77• 2 years ago

The one good thing about Palworld is it got me to learn about Cassette Beasts. A Pokemon-like that doesn't straight up rip off monsters and is not "early access" bullshit.

snowram2• 2 years ago

It also has a great soundtrack, I wholly recommend it!

doing_analytics• 2 years ago

Gamefreak / Big N had it coming. For years theyve let the poket monsters franchise stagnate.

Palworld is the best bits of multiple games joined into one. I played it for 10 hour thus far and am actually impressed. You can tune the world to be as relaxing or as intense as you want. You still get to enjoy the game like everyone else.

If they can keep it up, they may have made a franchise to rival poket monsters. After all, all IPs have their downfall.

hiccuphippo• 2 years ago

For the location map, instead of having one image of the map per creature, it would be better if you had a single image and then overlayed the locations with css. That way you could also use the same data to show all creatures from a single location.

Show HN: I made a Paldeck website, all Paldeck Pals in Palworld

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