In just five days since its launch, "Pal World" has sold more than 7 million copies, becoming only the second game in history to have more than 2 million concurrent users on Steam. Its unexpected and absurd level of success has led to much speculation and even condemnation as to the source of its appeal, but the idea of a "Pokémon with a gun" must be at least part of the answer, if not the exact one.

Finding someone to design a firearm for Pal World was apparently a challenge for Japanese developer Pocket Pair.

"Japan makes a ridiculous amount of RPGs," Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe said in a lengthy blog post last week (translated from the Japanese).

"The only one that comes to mind is Resident Evil, but that didn't focus on guns. Pal World is a popular game worldwide, so we decided at the very beginning of the project to make it a shooter."

"We decided to make it a shooter because it's a game that's popular all over the world.

There are other shooters developed by Japan, such as "Splatoon" and "Earth Defense Forces," but they are certainly not the most popular genre in Japan, and Mizobe said it was not easy to find developers with experience in this genre.

"We were looking for someone experienced in FPS/TPS game production. If we couldn't find someone in Japan, we had to hire someone from overseas, which was tough because none of us are fluent in English"

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A miracle occurred when Mizobe, browsing Twitter, stumbled upon an anonymous account filled with gun loading animations (see video below for an example). After exchanging messages, the mysterious artist turned out to be a 20-year-old part-time convenience store clerk from Hokkaido, Japan, with a junior high school education and zero industry experience.

The artist had taught himself how to create animations entirely by watching YouTube videos. According to Mizobe, he also learned to speak English almost fluently by playing FPS games.

"Certainly, given more time, the team could have learned how to do these animations. But I wanted the staff of 'Pal World' to be crazy about guns. I'm so glad I got to meet him."

Pocket Pair brought the artist on as a full-time employee and provided him with housing in Tokyo.

"I would have thought it was a scam too, that a small, unknown game studio would ask an inexperienced junior high school graduate to quit his part-time job at a convenience store and move to Tokyo as a full-time employee."

Pal World is technically in Early Access, but given its already successful and controversial nature, it is easy to forget that its development roadmap includes PvP, raid bosses, etc.