You are correct, I missed that it was still under speculation.

Pocketpair has a pretty good case against Nintendo here, I think, because other games have used these things before.

I know it was never actually released, but Scalebound had a mechanic that would have allowed a player to tell their dragon to perform a task, albeit, usually destructively.

Guild Wars 2 Added a mechanic years ago that let players traverse water and land by automatically a switching between mounts.

‘Releasing’ a creature into a 3d environment has been done by every minion-mancer class in an MMO since the dawn of the genre.

Looks like it’s over the game mechanics of ‘releasing a creature into a 3d environment and having it perform a contextual task’ & ‘having a rideable mount switch to a different rideable mount depending on terrain’

I don’t think either of these would work in the US, because you can’t protect game mechanics here, but I’m not sure about Japan’s take.

Edit: I missed that this was still under speculation at the time of the post:

https://bulbagarden.net/threads/nintendo-and-the-pokemon-company-jointly-file-lawsuit-for-patent-infringement-against-palworld-creator-pocketpair-inc-in-the-tokyo-district-court.303354/

Based on searching of Japanese patent databases, initial speculation is that these may include (but is not necessarily limited to) patents relating to game mechanics and gameplay features from Pokémon: Legends Arceus, and may include patents such as one for throwing and using Poké Balls in a 3D space (JP,2023-092953,A); and one for automatically switching between ride Pokémon as a player transitions between different terrain, such as between air and the ground (JP,2023-092954,A).

I haven’t played the third one co-op yet, unfortunately so I can only assume that it holds up like the second one does.

Nine Parchments - Top down Magic slinging romp. Similar to the Majica series, but with less knowing how to do certain key-press combos.

Orcs Must Die 2 - 3rd person tower defense where you place traps and use spells and weapons to take down foes. Continues the story of the first game, which did not have multiplayer, unfortunately.

Children of Morta - Top down dungeon crawler. Take on the roles of a family trying to hunt down an ancient evil. Like the Belmont’s of Castlevania fame.

Full Metal Furies - Top down action fighter. Fight the Titans as some of the last remaining survivors of Ragnarok. Fun dialing with a good-sized world map to explore.

Astroneer - 3rd person survival crafting on a randomized planet. Cute component designs and a unique air management system. Plays best with a mouse & keyboard.

Deep Rock Galactic - Space Dwarves Corporate mining simulator. You and up to 4 friends drive do into infested planetoids in order to make some Gold. Destructible terrain and shenanigans.