New Palworld mod adds three unreleased Pals, including that Pokemon Mewto rip-off

There are 137 Pals in Pocketpair's monster-catching simulator Palworld, which might sound like plenty, but the serial Palworld player is an insatiable creature, always clamouring for new beasties to capture, pet and exploit, even as the developers encourage fans to play other games while they wait for the next Palworld update. If you've already bagged all the available Pals and are hungry for more, you might be interested in Palworld mod Breed Unreleased Pals, created by ShameIHaveNoFriends, which grants access to three animals who exist in the game's files but are not, strictly speaking, available to players.

The first of these is Dragonstrophe, aka Lord of the Darkness, a dragon and dark element Pal which looks like the illicit lovechild of Smaug and Shadow The Hedgehog. Created by breeding a Quivern with a Dazzi, it was featured in early marketing materials for the game, which suggests that Pocketpair may yet add it to the menagerie officially at some stage. The mod equips it with a brace of appropriately apocalyptic powers, with Dark Laser unlocking at level 40 and Dragon Meteor unlocking at level 50.

Boltmane, meanwhile, is a sort of electric lion, created by breeding a Jolthog with a Univolt. "The more it moves, the more it heats up and the hair tips increasingly glow brighter," the game's Paldeck notes. "At its peak, it becomes so dazzling that you risk blindness if you stare at it directly." I haven't encountered Boltmane in the wilds and am unsure how faithful this depiction is - have you? The mod gives Boltmane a bunch of lightning-based abilities, as you'd expect, but there's also a fire-themed variant, created by breeding a Bushi with a Kelpsea Ignis.

Last but very much not least, the mod lets you breed DarkMutant, a glowering Dark-type bipedal creature who can cast poison fogs and gravity-based attacks. Discovered in January, it's the most risible of the mod's three unreleased Pals, given that it appears heavily based on Pokémon's Mega Mewtwo Y.

Palworld, you may have read, has faced some criticism for ripping off Pokémon's designs, though according to one lawyer we spoke to, this isn't a case of actual copyright infringement. Still, the prospect of a legal tussle between Pocketpair and the Pokémon Company raises some intriguing questions about how videogames play out attempts to define animals as intellectual property.

Whether you're installing the unreleased Pals mod or not, you might want to check out our list of the best Palworld pals and guide to breeding them. If you totally missed the game yet somehow read all the way to the end of this news article regardless, you might want to check out our Palworld early access review, in which a vengeful but not wholly revolted Katharine defines it as "stale", "undercooked" and an "infernal checklist".

Thanks and applause, applause to Videogamer for spotting the above mod and writing about it for the betterment of Palworlders everywhere.