Which game engine does Palworld use?

Palworld uses Unreal Engine 5. Pocketpair selected Epic Games’ Unreal technology for the game’s demanding open-world design, multiplayer systems, large environments, and creature-filled survival gameplay.

The engine choice is sometimes described inconsistently because Palworld’s development passed through multiple stages. Pocketpair’s earlier projects used Unity, and accounts of Palworld’s development describe an initial move to Unreal Engine 4 before the game’s later development and released versions used Unreal Engine 5. For the finished game players know, Unreal Engine 5 is the canonical answer.

Unreal Engine is not the same thing as the game’s visual style or its design rules. The engine supplies tools for rendering, physics, animation, networking, audio, and world construction, while Pocketpair remains responsible for Palworld’s mechanics, characters, environments, and systems. The engine also does not make Palworld a Pokémon game; creature collecting is a gameplay concept, not an engine feature.

Palworld’s large map, base-building, real-time combat, and simultaneous online play all create technical demands beyond a small standalone arena. Using Unreal gave Pocketpair a mature foundation for building and updating that interconnected world.