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Palworld hits 1.0 on July 10, and if you have already tamed every Pal, automated every factory, and armed your fluffy friends to the teeth, you might be wondering what to play next. Good news. The survival-crafting genre is stuffed with games that scratch the same itch, minus the Nintendo lawyers.
Palworld's whole trick is the blend: catch creatures, build a base, farm and craft, and occasionally point a gun at something. Not every game below does all of that, but each one nails a big piece of it, whether that is the taming, the base building, or the pure survival grind. You will find our seven picks below.
Table of Contents
The Best Games Like Palworld in 2026
Craftopia
Release: 4 Sept 2020
Start with the obvious one. Craftopia is Pocketpair's other game, the sandbox they were making before Palworld blew up, and it is basically a kitchen sink of ideas: crafting, farming, automation, hunting, dungeon diving, all thrown together with the same cheerful "why not" energy. It is janky and unfocused in the best way. If you liked Palworld's everything-at-once approach, this is the studio's first crack at it.
ARK: Survival Ascended
The granddaddy of taming games, rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5. ARK is where the "knock out a giant creature, tame it, then ride it into battle" loop really took off, and Survival Ascended is the modernized version of the 2017 original. Breeding, huge tribes, base building that spirals out of control, dinosaurs everywhere. It is a serious time sink and not always friendly to newcomers, but nothing else does creature husbandry at this scale.
Enshrouded
Release: 24 Jan 2024
If the survival and building side of Palworld is what hooked you, Enshrouded is the one to grab. Keen Games' 2024 hit mixes voxel-based building you can actually get creative with, a proper action-RPG combat system, and a sprawling world wrapped in a deadly fog. It runs well, the co-op is smooth, and the crafting has real depth. No creature collecting here, but it is one of the best-feeling survival games in years.
Nightingale
Release: 20 Feb 2024
Nightingale trades tropical islands for a Victorian gaslamp fantasy, sending you hopping between procedurally built realms through mysterious portals. It is a survival crafter with a striking look and a heavy focus on building your own network of worlds. It had a bumpy Early Access start, no secret, but Inflexion Games has been steadily improving it, and the realm-hopping hook is genuinely unlike anything else on this list.
Once Human
Release: 9 July 2024
Free to jump into, which makes it an easy recommendation. Once Human is an open-world survival game set in a weird post-apocalypse full of twisted monsters called Deviants, some of which you can capture and put to work, which is about as Palworld as it gets tonally. Base building, shooting, and a spooky atmosphere carry it. The seasonal server structure is not for everyone, but the price of admission is zero.
Grounded
Obsidian shrank you down to the size of an ant and dropped you in a backyard, and somehow it became one of the best co-op survival games out there. Grounded is smaller in scope than the others, but that focus is the point: a tight, creative survival adventure with genuinely great base building and a surprisingly tense food chain. Perfect for a small group who wants something less overwhelming than an MMO-sized world.
Monster Hunter Wilds
Not a base builder, but if the creature obsession is the part of Palworld you love, Capcom's 2025 juggernaut is the deep end of the pool. Monster Hunter Wilds is all about studying, hunting, and eventually mastering enormous beasts, then turning them into increasingly ridiculous gear. The combat is far meatier than anything else here, the loop is endlessly moreish, and there is a massive community to hunt with.
So, filling the Palworld-shaped hole with more taming, more building, or more monster slaying? Start with Craftopia if you want the closest match, Enshrouded if you just want a great survival game, and Once Human if you want to try one for free. What are you playing after 1.0? Let us know in the comments.
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