Palworld’s suddenly everyone’s favourite game, but for the love of Garfield, please stop that cat from meowing

Palworld has had an exceptional launch. The monster-collecting meets survival-crafting game has garnered millions of sales and managed to rise to the top of the Steam charts, surpassing Counter-Strike 2’s all-time player peak, which is quite the feat.

And with Palworld releasing into Early Access, as well as on Xbox Game Pass, it’s safe to say that the game has been a success so far, despite the claims of plagiarism that’ve been made against it. Either way, most of us can’t put Palworld down, or at the very least, can’t stop talking about it for both good and bad reasons.

Now, Palworld – as refreshing as it is – isn’t all smooth gameplay and plain-sailing fun. Everything you need for an enjoyable experience is there, but you will run into bugs that see your Pals become stuck or NPCs start running into walls, and so on. However, the one issue that I ran into when I first started playing Palworld didn’t involve any bugs at all. It instead involved a horde of small, but tough, cat Pals known as Cattiva.

I love Cattiva. They’re cats, they always look perplexed, and they’re pink. They’re brilliant at mining and transporting their ore to chests, and they’ll even improve my carry weight when I take them with me in my Pal Party for a long day of exploring and mining. They’re one of the first Pals that players run into, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll have an entire army of them in your Palbox by the time you reach Palworld’s endgame.

But me and the Cattiva were not always friends. As I first arrived at the Plateau of Beginnings in Palworld, I made my way north and began to build a base in the first big, flat patch of land I could find. The area was swarming with Chikipis, Lamballs, and Cattivas, as well as all of the resources I’d need to get started, so it seemed perfect.

Then, as I built my first base and prepared for nightfall, I heard some meowing. That’s fine, I thought. Cattiva meow sometimes, and that’s okay. But then the meowing didn’t stop. I slept through the night and got back to building my base and everything my Pals would need for a long and fruitful life doing all my work for me, and the meowing still didn’t stop.

If I was lucky, I’d get a moment of peace here and there, but for the most part, my perfect starting location had been ruined by the near-distressing meows of my horde of Cattiva Pals. Being surrounded by Cattiva spawns was all fun and games until said Cattiva couldn’t stop themselves from meowing for more than five minutes. And despite what some of you may think after the world accused VG247 of being dog propagandists in summer of 2022, we love cats on this team (mostly) so you’d think I would be overjoyed to be surrounded by cat friends… but hearing their yowls over and over as I try to build things to improve the quality of life of my Pals suddenly made me feel very tyrannical.

To escape the endless meowing, I had two options; destroy every Cattiva, or relocate my base. As a cat-lover, I opted for the latter and moved even further up north where there wasn’t a single Cattiva in sight, but not after booting a few Cattiva off the nearby cliff edges as revenge for making me lose sleep in-game.

I fear that Palworld may be bringing out the worst in me, but at least the few dozen Cattiva I have working my mining base for me are on the other side of Palpagos Islands where I don’t have to hear them anymore…