Pal World has taken the non-Pal real world by storm, but no matter how big Survival Craft's Pokémon brutality engine gets, I'm going to stay in my bunker and play old-school 1998 CRPGs until the storm passes. Studio Pocket Pair's next game, Nevergrave: The Witch and the Curse, may be a bit more to my liking.

My first thought was, "Damn, that looks a lot like Hollow Knight," and there is a temptation to repeatedly accuse this studio's games of derivative quality. However, like Palworld's Pokémon DNA, Neverglave's Hollow Knight-ness is mostly superficial, and the game strikes me as a Palworld world "what if there was a survival crafting game with a dwarf who could do boring things at the base?" with a similar It seems to bring innovation of scope.

The environments are reminiscent of Hallownest, but Never Grave is not bug-centric like Hollow Knight, with enemies such as minotaurs and giant lizard knights. These enemies tie into one of the game's big curveballs, the hat-based enemy possession mechanic taken straight from Super Mario Odyssey. That was an incredible mechanic that Nintendo may never do again, so it's nice to see Cappy get a new lease of life.

Another big change is the inclusion of cooperative play and a base-building mechanic in the village above the dungeon. Up to four players can take on the "Never Grave" together, and rebuilding the village seems to be very free: one player is shown setting up his house by hand, and later some of his co-op buddies are shown harvesting crops.

"Never Grave" is a strange game with many different inspirations, but it seems like it could work; there's something tacky about "Hollow Knight with base-building and co-op. But like the brutal Pokémon of Palworld, it could be an anarchic, illicit thrill ride.

The developer of Never Grave is Frontside 180 and the publisher is Pocketpair, but looking up Frontside on Steam only redirects to Pocketpair's developer page, so who knows what is going on there? Never Grave will be released in Early Access by the end of March, and on Steam you can check out a demo and wishlist the game.