New Leaked Pokémon Game Could’ve Beaten Palworld To The Punch

Along with other internal, scrapped, or in-development material leaked from the Pokémon series, it’s been revealed that the franchise could also have its own Palworld competitor in the form of an unreleased MMO, codenamed Rodeo. Released in 2024, Palworld‘s popularity quickly took off, at least in part because it offers an experience that’s been missing from the wider Pokémon franchise, using a similar monster-collecting formula, but in the context of a cooperative open-world base-building game along the lines of ARK.

The unreleased Rodeo game could have given players a similar experience years before Palworld‘s release. Having apparently been in development since 2019, the game was seemingly going to offer a broadly similar multiplayer experience, but potentially with more of a focus on riding and battling Pokémon. Currently, Rodeo‘s development seems to have been canceled internally, and it’s likely that the game’s leaked form won’t see release, but there is the possibility that another project, codenamed Synapse, is an in-development revival of the concept.

Codename Rodeo Let You Ride Pokémon Around

Rodeo’s Leaked Gameplay Shows A Co-Op Pokémon Action Game

Judging from the leaks (via CentroLeaks on X, formerly Twitter), the gameplay of the leaked Rodeo MMOcentered mainly around the mechanic of riding Pokémon, likely as a more in-depth version of the mechanic introduced in Pokémon Sun and Moon and later expanded in Legends: Arceus and Scarlet and Violet. Leaked videos (which have since been taken down from CentroLeak’s post) show a protagonist riding a Garchomp, Decidueye, Electivire or Samurott, with the player seemingly having the ability to control the mounted Pokémon to engage in real-time third-person action combat. Additionally, videos showed the player being able to send out other Pokémon to use attacks as well.

Other leaked features include the ability to customize Pokémon with paint markings, and a “gun” resembling a paint sprayer with an unspecified use case.

Unfortunately, there’s no video that shows exactly what the game would have looked like in action, but from descriptions of it, Rodeo would have been a cooperative game about battling Pokémon to capture and ride, potentially making its gameplay loop similar to games like Monster Hunter. Whatever the case, the leaked version of Rodeo does seem to have been a step away from the turn-based combat of the mainline Pokémon games, placing more of a focus on action and potentially exploration as well.

Codename Rodeo Isn’t Exactly Palworld, But It’s Close

Rodeo Is A Similar Concept To Palworld, But There Are Key Differences

While the game could be compared to Palworld, there do seem to be some key differences. Notably, going by the leaked material, Rodeo doesn’t seem to have included any sort of base-building or resource-gathering mechanics, which make up a large portion of Palworld‘s gameplay, and while the forest setting seen in the leaked videos might point towards a fairly open setting, it’s also unknown if Rodeo would’ve been a truly open-world experience. Finally, while Palworld has players primarily controlling their own created character in combat, Rodeo seemingly would have focused more on controlling the Pokémon.

The concept of a co-op game about fighting Pokémon with third-person action combat, however, does resemble the kind of combat that can be found in Palworld, especially when it comes to the game’s multiple raid bosses, and the leaked concept art for Rodeo does include a sort of “gun” that the protagonist might have been able to use in combat. Moreover, riding Pals is a major mode of transportation in Palworld, lending it at least another superficial similarity to the unreleased concepts for Rodeo. More importantly, just being in a similar enough niche would have put the games in competition.

If Pokémon Had Released This Game, Palworld’s Story Might Be Different

Rodeo’s Release Would Have Competed More Directly With Palworld

While the leaked version of Rodeo is distinctly different from Palworld, the games have enough broad similarities that, if Rodeo had been released first, Palworld might not have taken off like it did. Despite Palworld‘s pre-launch reputation as being “Pokémon with guns,” the game does serve a valuable niche, offering a drastically different style of gameplay than any currently released Pokémon game. If Rodeo had been released before Palworld‘s launch, however, it might have ended up attracting enough of the same audience that Palworld might not have seen the same level of success.

With how Palworld‘s release actually did turn out, though, the game essentially has very little in the way of direct competition, as Pokémon doesn’t offer anything similar, and the monster-collecting aspect differentiates it from the likes of ARK or Rust. Of course, there are enough differences between Palworld and the leaked version of Rodeo that it’s likely Palworld would’ve found success regardless, but the game might not have attracted as much of an audience if there was already a Pokémon game operating in a broadly similar space.

Pokémon Should Still Release Its Codename Rodeo Game

A Released Version Of Rodeo Could Be A Breath Of Fresh Air For Pokémon

Currently, the status of Rodeo is unknown – while the Synapse project revealed by the Pokémon leaks has been speculated to be a revival of the Rodeo concept, nothing has been explicitly confirmed, and the game could have changed drastically in the years since Rodeo was in development. Whether it’s currently in the works or not, though, the Rodeo premise does have the potential to be a big hit, especially off the back of Palworld‘s success. While the game was presumably scrapped for unknown reasons, a revival of the project could end up filling a niche that no other Pokémon game serves.

If Synapse is a currently in-development version of Rodeo, the release of the game on Nintendo’s next console could be just what Pokémon needs to shake up the franchise and provide a different kind of game for players who are tired of the mainline series. Of course, the developers would have to take care not to repeat the disappointing launch of Scarlet and Violet, but a revived Rodeo project could end up being one of the biggest draws for the upcoming successor to the Switch.

So while Rodeo, as it was being developed in 2019, has most likely been canceled, the leaked project Synapse could still be the co-op Pokémon project that fans have been waiting for, and something that approaches the same niche as Palworld. While it’s too late to beat Palworld to the punch at this point, a released version of the Rodeo project could still draw in an audience that’s similarly grown tired of the mainline Pokémon formula.

Source: CentroLeaks/X