I meant to type this a while ago.
But stuff happened, and now that I have some hospital time, I thought I’d push it out.

The Baby Sister, Other, and I all started playing Palword.

How we reacted and interacted with the game’s goals is fastly different. It’s interesting.

As a kind of future note, I wanted to note how we could be presented with a series of possibilities – like in Palworld – how it’s approached and how it could influence reaching the goal or even what that goal is.

Example A
Baby Sister.

She’s a Millennial, works in the food service, and has been a manager. The most extroverted of us all, she’s social and always thinks of others. But I think she also spends the most on herself, taking active pride in her looks and clothes.

I think she’s “pal first.”

—– In her Palworld, I think her priorities are:

* Building
Of the three of us, she’s the only one who plotted and built a house.

Being pal first, she placed more emphasis on food and ranches. Ranches to make wool, milk, and other items.
Breeding came a bit later once she was advanced enough to bake cake.

— She tends to stock and hoard items, but not to the degree of others. Often considering 1000 enough, she moves on to stock other items.

She does explore, but only a bit at a time from what I can tell. She tends not to move on to another area until she has thoroughly explored the current one.

The only one to use the butcher knife; it took a while for her to discover that it wasn’t wild pals but ones that she caught.

I believe that she likes to swap out her party fairly frequently.

Her starting preferred pals are ‘cute.’

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Example B
The Other

Other is male, my age, and works in a career that relies on objectivity. Although he gets along well with others, he’s fairly introverted. His extroversion shows up in other ways, mainly on online, and he tends to be kind. But tends to be deeply suspicious of large companies.

Of the three of us, he knows the gaming industry best and has played most, if not all, genres.

I would describe his Palworld playstyle as exploratory.

He set up his first base to be easily defensible but extremely space-limited. This was a major detractor early on.

The first to have a flying mount, he explored a lot. The priority wasn’t exactly on the pals, while they were important, it was filling out the map. Because he was constantly out of tech points.

I think most of the game for him was pursuing tech points. He needed them to unlock technology to further his goal of beating the game and corpse recovery, since his exploration often led to difficult retrievals.

His method was ‘just in time’ supply. If the item was needed, like AI components, he had to produce all of the intermediary steps in the middle. He rarely had the parts in stock to build what he needed when he needed it.

He had a ranch for some items but only barely experimented with breeding. I’m guessing it was for the achievement.

His preferred pals were humanoid, particularly female forms. Party members could change frequently, but some – like Selyne – were constant.


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Example C
Me!

I would consider my playstyle stingy.

I hoard practically every item and become kind of irritated if I can’t create what I want when I want. But once a stack of something hits the magical 9999, I stop and go hoard other items, unless it is organs, ore, or some other basic.

Exploration – yes and no.
If I’m lacking an item needed to advance the game, I’ll find it and farm it until I don’t need it anymore. Exploration is kind of a biproduct and not a goal at first. . Once I feel that I can effectively advance, I’ll go deeper into the zone.

For example, I needed hardwood.
It’s on the shore of an island. I gathered what I needed, farmed a bit more, and THEN explored. Not before.. Coincidentally, I was the last one to have a flying mount.

When logging in, depending on the time, I have a lap of easy targets just for pals to condense together.

Tech points aren’t an issue, since I unlock items only when I need them. I don’t feel the urge to unlock everything, or even items that could be quality-of-life improvements.

Weapons, armor, and other items are rarely replaced. Pals are mainly used in combat. I just hide behind pillars or something and time switching out the pals.

My party rarely changes. Chillet, for example, was one of the earliest, and I consider it one of my best. I only switched the mining elephant when I had to start going to wildlife sanctuaries. The first flying mount I considered worthy – the electric thing – is still my primary.

Since several have turned 80, I’ve finally considered replacements, like Selyne, who I’ve mostly used for research and exploration.

I think I tried to skip all of the pals I considered beginning or low-level game pals. I toughed it out until mid-tier and invested time and resources into them. And only go to a higher tier if I feel that it is effective to do so.

I have yet to experiment with breeding as I’m hoarding cakes — no, not the beginning cakes but extravagant ones for better results (skipping what I consider low tier again). When I feel I have enough, I’ll experiment with breeding.

I don’t have any pushing goal to finish the game.
Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

But it does provide a good point of conversation and introspection.