Palworld: 'Pokémon with guns' sells 5m copies in three days

The makers of an online multiplayer game dubbed "Pokémon with guns" say it's sold five million copies in three days.

Palworld, from Japanese company Pocketpair, has been an overnight success since it launched on Friday.

But its surprising popularity meant players struggled to log on at times due to server crashes.

The game's also been criticised as a Pokémon rip-off due to the similarity of its creatures.

Palworld is described as a "multiplayer monster-collecting game with open-world survival elements".

Players, known as "pal-tamers" travel around a large map battling human foes and creatures known as "pals" which can be captured and recruited.

The monsters can either fight alongside the player in battles, or be put to work at a base, crafting supplies and items for use in the field.

Despite its huge sales, Palworld has not been a hit with everyone.

Its character design in particular has come in for criticism, with people accusing its developer of copying designs from Pokémon.

Reviewers and fans have also pointed out that Palworld's gameplay borrows heavily from survival games like Rust and Ark: Survival.

However, it's been praised for its graphics and has a "very positive" user rating on digital game store Steam, based on 40,000 reviews.

The game has been launched in "early access" - where the version available to players is not the final product.

Fans get to play the game sooner than they might have, and companies are able to raise money towards polishing the game.

But an unfinished version of the game can mean players experience bugs, crashes and other problems.

Pocketpair said it would "share information about the fixes for these issues as soon as possible".

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