Pocketpair Publishing lead John 'Bucky' Buckley jokes Slay the Spire 2's release has definitely pushed back the release of Palworld 1.0 by "at least" a day.
Slay the Spire 2 was immediately a huge success, with the game hitting over 570,000 concurrent players during its opening weekend – that's one of Steam's top 20 highest peaks of all time for anyone keeping count – which isn't exactly surprising from the sequel to one of the best deckbuilders of all time. One of those players was the CEO of Palworld developer Pocketpair, Takuro Mizobe, who apparently got a telling off from staff after staying up all night playing it.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ at GDC 2026, Bucky was asked if Slay the Spire 2 has significantly impacted development at Pocketpair. The dev responds: "Big time. I'd say Palworld 1.0 is delayed at least a whole day now – at least 24 hours delayed." And while Bucky is laughing while saying this, it's hard to tell if there isn't a bit of truth to it.
He explains that Slay the Spire 1 is "our CEO's favorite game," adding: "We all knew he was going to be obsessed with it, but I don't think we realized the extent. It really was like trying to get a child to go to school. The last couple of days – yeah, he's been hard to get in touch with."
However, it seems to have been a widespread contagion, with Bucky admitting, "Pocketpair is dominated by two games – Rimworld and Slay the Spire."
When asked if a Palworld deckbuilder was in the cards, Bucky points players to Pocketpair's Overdungeon, but says "I don't know if we'd make another one – certainly not to the incredible level of Slay the Spire." However, he does predict that Slay the Spire 2 will be "Indie of the Year, I'm calling it now," clearly already forgetting that Mewgenics released this year.
