I built a tiny Palworld route planner around a very specific SEO wedge
I launched a small free tool for a narrow gaming search niche: https://palroutes.com/
Most Palworld breeding calculators answer one question: which two parents produce a target Pal?
The pain I wanted to test was slightly different: if a player pastes the Pals they already own, can the tool find a practical route to the target Pal without forcing them through species they do not have yet?
So the MVP is intentionally small:
- paste or edit an owned Palbox
- pick a target Pal
- get the shortest practical breeding route
- show route pages for examples like Anubis, Direhowl, and Aegidron
It got its first ~100 visits after launch, mostly from cold-start sharing. Next I am trying to see whether this can rank on long-tail terms like owned Pals breeding route and specific target routes.
Curious how other indie hackers would position something this niche: keep it as a single-use free tool, or turn it into a broader Palworld planning hub?
Keep the single-use tool until search data proves adjacent intent. The owned-Palbox input is the wedge; adding a broad planner now risks competing on generic calculators before you've learned which target routes pull repeat searches. I'd ship 20-30 route pages and watch which targets create second sessions, then let that behavior define the hub.