Palworld's Unused Pal 'Graveyard' Holds Hundreds of Scrapped Designs

Behind every Pal that makes it into Palworld is a much larger collection of creatures that did not survive the development process. Pocketpair has revealed that its internal archive of discarded concepts is not a small folder of near-misses, but a "graveyard" containing hundreds of rough Pal ideas that were ultimately left behind.

The scale of that unused catalogue is a reminder of how much iteration sits behind creature-collection games. A Pal does not simply begin as a sketch and immediately become a finished in-game companion, worker, mount, or combat partner. At Pocketpair, the route from a first visual concept to a fully usable 3D character involves company-wide feedback, modelling, rigging, and repeated reassessment. A design can fail at any of those points.

John "Bucky" Buckley, Pocketpair's head of publishing and communications, discussed the process during Gamescom 2026. His description makes it clear that the team's Pal pipeline is both collaborative and selective: lots of concepts are made, many are voted on internally, and only some prove strong enough once they reach the more expensive and time-consuming stages of production.

From a quick sketch to a finished Pal

According to Buckley, Pocketpair has a large group of 2D concept artists whose day-to-day work includes producing sketches for possible Pals. Those ideas are then posted in a dedicated Slack channel, where employees across the company can rank them on a one-to-five scale.

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That system means the initial response is not limited to a small art or design group. Pocketpair lets the wider studio participate in deciding which creature concepts have the strongest potential. It is an approach that gives the team an early sense of whether a design has broad appeal before it receives further work.

But an enthusiastic reaction to a drawing is not a guarantee that the character will work in the game. Buckley explained that the jump from 2D art to 3D can expose problems that were not obvious in a flat image. A silhouette may read well in a sketch but become awkward when viewed from different angles. A combination of features may look striking on paper while producing an unconvincing model. Even after a model has been made, the team can still decide that the result is not right.

That is where the graveyard grows. Pocketpair has accumulated hundreds of rough Pal concepts that did not make the final cut, whether because the early vote was not strong enough, the design did not translate effectively into 3D, or the finished model simply failed to meet the team's expectations.

For players, that may sound like an enormous number of abandoned creatures. For a game built around a large and continually expanding roster, though, it also speaks to the amount of filtering required. Every Pal needs to be recognizable at a glance, visually distinct from the rest of the cast, and suitable for the practical demands of gameplay. The design has to work while moving, fighting, performing jobs, appearing in the world, and being seen alongside other Pals and players.

Rejected ideas can still contribute to the final roster

A scrapped Pal is not always a completely wasted piece of work. Buckley said that Pocketpair sometimes combines elements from unused creatures, effectively assembling a new design from parts of concepts the team liked individually.

That kind of reuse makes sense in a process with so much experimentation. One abandoned creature may have an appealing head shape, another may have a strong body type, and a third may contain a useful visual theme or detail. Rather than treating every rejected model as permanently off-limits, the team can identify what worked and carry those pieces into a new direction.

The result is a development process that appears less like a straight line and more like a cycle of proposals, feedback, revisions, and recombination. The "graveyard" is not merely a list of failures. It is also a record of ideas that may have helped Pocketpair discover what it wanted from later Pals.

That is especially relevant for a game whose creature roster needs variety beyond appearances alone. A successful Pal design has to establish its own identity, but it also needs to fit within a larger ecosystem of monsters. The team has to consider how a new addition sits next to existing favorites, how clearly it can be identified in busy gameplay situations, and whether it brings something memorable to the roster.

Internal voting gives Pocketpair one way to test an idea's immediate impact. If people throughout the studio respond positively to a sketch, that is a useful early sign. Yet the later stages remain essential because a Pal is ultimately a game asset, not only a piece of illustration. It needs a workable model and rig, and it needs to hold up as an animated character in the world.

Sekhmet was an unusually clear hit

While hundreds of concepts have been set aside, Pocketpair has also seen the opposite outcome: a creature that generated such a strong internal reaction that its path through production moved with unusual speed. Buckley identified Sekhmet as the fastest Pal to travel from concept through design, modelling, and rigging.

He said the reaction in the company's Slack channel was exceptionally active, with the design drawing a level of response the team had not seen before. In other words, Sekhmet was not a case where a concept gradually earned approval after a long debate. The team appears to have quickly recognized that it had something worth pursuing.

That kind of response is particularly notable alongside Buckley's description of the usual pipeline. If a standard Pal can be reconsidered after the 2D stage, questioned again once it becomes a 3D model, and potentially abandoned even later, then moving swiftly through all of those steps is a significant exception. Sekhmet apparently had the combination of initial appeal and production viability that many concepts never achieve.

It also shows why Pocketpair's voting channel matters. An internal ranking system is not only useful for weeding out weaker ideas; it can also reveal the rare design that unites the team immediately. When a creature creates that kind of broad enthusiasm, the studio has a clearer reason to prioritize it and commit resources to turning it into a finished Pal.

A growing game means a growing archive

Palworld has continued to receive updates, so the number of concepts in Pocketpair's unused archive may keep increasing as the game evolves. New creature ideas can emerge from gameplay needs, new themes, visual experiments, or simply the desire to expand the possibilities of the world. Not all of those ideas will reach players, and Pocketpair's process suggests that many are expected to fall away before release.

That does not mean every removed concept was necessarily poor. Some may have been too similar to existing Pals. Others may have contained one good idea without working as a complete creature. Some may have run into technical or animation issues that could not be resolved without compromising the design. In a roster-driven game, choosing not to add a character can be as important as choosing to add one.

The disclosure also gives fans a rare look at the less visible side of monster design. Players tend to encounter the final roster as a set of polished, complete characters, each with a name, look, and place in the game. The development reality is far messier: sketches are ranked, models are reconsidered, appealing pieces are salvaged, and a large number of candidates are quietly put aside.

For Pocketpair, that ongoing willingness to discard and revise ideas may be one reason individual Pals can stand out so strongly. The team is not relying on the first idea that reaches the page. It is putting concepts through several stages of scrutiny, while also retaining enough flexibility to rebuild a character from promising fragments of earlier work.

Sekhmet's rapid rise offers the more celebratory side of that process. Hundreds of rough Pals may live in the graveyard, but the occasional concept can still produce a studio-wide reaction powerful enough to speed it directly toward the game. As Palworld continues to develop, that contrast between discarded experiments and instant favorites will likely remain central to how its creature roster takes shape.