None of the images in this article are from Palworld. They aren’t from Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda, Overwatch, Mario Kart, nor any anime tie-in game. Under normal circumstances, every part of that last sentence would have been completely redundant and unnecessary. But Pickmon has forced my hand.
This newly-revealed, and surprisingly ambitious title from PocketGame (no, not the Palworld devs – you’re thinking of PocketPair) has just popped up on Steam, ready to be wishlisted at your leisure. To that end, it’s provided a teaser trailer, and a number of screenshots, which you can see as you scroll down this article. None of those images are from Palworld.
One of the things that landed Palworld in hot water was the designs of its various Pals; not merely following Pokémon’s art style, but often acting as analogues for real Pokémon designs. There’s a Lucario-like called Anubis, a Lycanroc copy called Direhound, and so on.
Pickmon takes this to its next “logical” step. Many of its designs appear to be hybrids of Pal and Pokémon designs, like a Lucario/Anubis hybrid in the game’s key art.
Palworld was already toeing the lines of copyright infringement. However close Palworld was, many of Pickmon’s designs are precisely 50% closer to it. Take a look at the image below and see how many legal nightmares you can spot.
Of course, a Pickmon’s work is never done. Ripping off creature-collector titles is mere child’s play compared to the inner machinations of PocketGame.
Nobody Is Safe From Pickmon
Pickmon doesn’t just have funny monsters in it – it’s got people. People like “Highwayboar”, for whom the Overwatch subreddit had a good laugh. And the apparent main character of the game, who definitely isn’t Breath of the Wild’s Link, is visible from the opening moments of Pickmon’s trailer – also viewable from the Steam Store page.
That trailer also advertises a “future release planned for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation”, which is a thing that will definitely happen.
Pickmon’s official English-language X account hints that, yes, they do indeed know exactly what they’re doing. The account’s description boasts how the game is “completely new”, which kind of gives away the whole bit but it’s nice to have the clarification.
Pickmon is almost certainly ragebait; the game asserts it’s gotten over 25 million “impressions”, and hey, if that’s the number they’re aiming for then well done.
Whether they hit their goal of “releasing a game that doesn’t get eviscerated by 100s of lawyers 0.2 seconds after release” remains to be seen, and as of yet it’s not yet known when that day will come. The game’s trailer only says that Pickmon is “coming soon”, and no release window has been posted elsewhere.
If you’re interested in watching someone toy with copyright law like it’s a game of Crocodile Dentist, then you’ll have no shortage of places to watch the fireworks from.
As things stand, Pickmon doesn’t seem to have any gameplay features that’d let it stand the test of time as well as Palworld has, but acting as a bystander is always free. Even if PocketGame doesn’t see the financial returns they’re looking for, they’ll no doubt bring endless entertainment to the masses.
