New survival game clones "Horizon" and offers "Palworld" gameplay

The Polaris Quest studio, which belongs to Chinese technology giant Tencent, has announced "Light of Motiram", an open-world survival game, and released a trailer. In the gaming world, copying successful games is not unusual to a certain extent. The only question is when the threshold of audacity is reached. And "Light of Motiram" crosses it with giant strides.

From the machine giants, some of which are almost 1-to-1 replicas, to the apocalyptic world with beautiful landscapes and the colourful clothing of the people - "Light of Motiram" looks like a rip-off of the "Horizon" games by Dutch game developer Guerilla Games.

You can reprogramme some of the machines as in "Horizon" and use them as mounts or as helpers in battle. However, "Light of Motiram" also cribs from another game.

Survival and base-building á la "Palworld"

The 16-minute gameplay video shows that "Light of Motiram" places a lot of emphasis on expanding your own base. You build your accommodation, cook around a campfire, plant a vegetable garden and use production facilities to process materials and craft items.

And here's the kicker: you can also create cute mechanical helpers to do the work for you in the base. At minute 3:10, you can see a kind of mechanical duck running to a garden and spitting water onto the plants. This is not only the same principle as in "Palworld", but also looks exactly the same. The only difference is that these are mechanical creatures. In the video, you can also see a blue mechanical animal hopping around the base and operating a plant.

This means that, unlike "Palworld", the studio should at least avoid a copyright lawsuit from Nintendo - because "Palworld" has itself made extensive use of Nintendo's "Pokémon" by using the cuddly creatures. "Light of Motiram" is therefore a kind of visual "Horizon" with "Palworld" gameplay, including co-op mode.

What else is known

According to the Steam page, "Light of Motiram" offers a large, open game world with different biomes. The game is set in the year 2068 and on the official website, which is currently only available in Chinese, you can read that an AI has destroyed human civilisation. You play a "pioneer of a primitive tribe" and therefore start with the simplest equipment, which you improve as the game progresses. When constructing the base, you have to take the statics of the buildings into account and you can, for example, be crushed by a tree when it falls.

In the gameplay video, you can see the game character blowing up explosive barrels from a distance with a bow and arrow to kill enemies. Melee weapons such as spears and hammers are also used. Resources can be mined along the way and you can glide down into valleys with a paraglider for as long as your stamina lasts. There are remnants of the lost human civilisation in the world, as well as machine locations to discover.

"Light of Motiram" is to be released on PC and Playstation 5 as well as on Android and iOS. A date has not yet been announced.