Palia
Game Title: Palia
Released: March 25, 2024
Game Length: N/A
Grade: A
Development
Releases: It might not seem that long ago when Singularity 6 started working on Palia. The Discord initially opened on June 3rd, 2021 with the first pre-alpha test on July 8th, 2021. The second test started on November 19th, 2021. The game reached alpha testing on February 16th, 2022 with a second test on July 28th, 2022. Closed beta testing began August 2nd, 2023 with open beta on August 10th, 2023. The game released in the Epic Store on October 24th, 2023. It was released on Nintendo Switch on December 14th, 2023. Steam didn't have it available until March 25th, 2024.
Status: A question I see all the time online is whether or not the game has ever formally been released. Honestly, the game appears to be as complete as it will ever be. After the patches made in May & June (discussed in detail below), there seems to be more than enough content to keep everyone happy. Even though there isn't an official roadmap, people love to speculate now that Daybreak acquired Singularity 6. They had raised $30 million from funds but ultimately had waves of lay offs and employees leave this year. This implies that all the major work is done and future patches will focus more on premium additions. However, there seems to still be some focus for adjusting your general gameplay experience.
Quality of Life: This might not initially seem important but a lot of main features are really recent. Patches 0.180 in May 2024 and 0.181 in June 2024 added a lot of things that makes the game much more friendly to new players. They added a two-story Grand Harvest House. You can now construct blocks, ramps, walls, floors, and ramps. Although you can't read or lay them flat, books can be bought and placed on the shelves. Various stone and wood can be placed down on the ground to create unique pathways. They even adjust to a random selection of sizes when selected. Rare plushies have been added to a number of creatures. Log fence is no longer the only type you can create as the white picket fence is now available. Chat bubbles appear above players. Hotpot mini-game has been added permanently underground with a large selection of rewards. Enemies will now sustain their lost health instead of resetting when escaping. Party members now share loot, including plushies. The limit of gold was raised from 300,000 to 999,999 and renown was increased from 1,000 to 9,999. Rarer items sell for more, crafting requires less material, and recipes cost less to buy. Crafting a silver bar went from about two hours to 9 minutes and gold bars went from around 4 hours to 18 minutes. Rummage Piles no longer give you a single stone or sapwood. Upgrading to copper storage went down from 25,000 gold to 10,000. You receive free rooms for each level you increase the furniture skill and free seeds for each level you increase the gardening skill. Health bars appear enemies and where there is loot now shows up on the map. Various skins, pets, and landscapes have been added to the premium store.
Bugs: Unfortunately, the game is not without its problems. There was a slight issue trying to setup an account. The game has a problem freezing when it is trying to load information. This can come after transitioning to another area or compiling data when other people are present. This can happen once every gaming session. You can enter back into the game after a brief period of properly disconnecting to the server but you might be moved to the nearest stable even if you were inside a private instance. Sometimes the game doesn't let you collect loot. Creatures, items, and loot can sometimes clip into the environment above, below, and sideways. Decorations aren't always displayed accurately. Meals that display with a skillet will sometimes show as bowl. Items bought in the store will have various items inside that are not included in the purchase. The game never informs you what to do with this sign but your options include either leaving it broken or cutting it down - you cannot repair it. There seems to be some sort of confusion when performing two separate functions. You cannot select an item in your inventory and access your storage at the same time. Sometimes you can set a marker on the map and accidentally teleport to your house when you try to sprint immediately after trying to close the map. Merchants will sometimes show the description in the first item from the previous merchant. Not all walls can be climbed with various corners and cliffs that impede your progress. Characters and players will not animate if your distance is limited. They can appear as if gliding in the air and cosmetics such as tails will fling around once they do animate.
Cosmetics
Achievements: While most achievements simply provide you with renown, you can obtain collaborative rewards for things such as collecting every bug or mining every ore. Trophies are given for completing "guild" levels (10, 25, 50). In Build 0.181, there is a new achievement with 5 tiers of rewards you complete by gaining experience while in a party. These provide the exclusive Growable Furniture set for each tier. Once fully grown, they will provide you with a seed to repeat the process like any other plant. You can turn in rare items at the temple mural for special rewards. While most of the rewards feel like random items you can accumulate anywhere, there are some very unique effects that happen when you unlock the bundles. You must first complete each of the four temples to unlock their respective category. Unfortunately, they are extremely difficult. While you can eventually discover some recipes after befriending the village and use a lure to mass spawn bugs in a designated area, there is no way to speed up your chances on fishing. Even if you are conscious on both time and location, collecting an Epic fish can take 100-200 casts. World chests that have emblem tokens appear only after completing the sliding puzzle in the temple. This is the way you craft Emberborn Furniture set.
Premium Content:
There is a premium currency that closely resembles the actual cost. So, 425 is provided for $4.99 or 850 is provided for $8.49 just
for a couple of examples. These cannot be earned in the game. A Sandy Palcat is given as a reward for making any purchase. Buy at least 3,000 (or roughly $30 worth of) coins to access the other three palcats. There are less than a dozen glider cosmetics exclusively found in the store. Builds 0.180 and 0.181 introduced a lot of things such as Flutterfox and Drake pets, tool skins, and three new landscapes for your house plot. There seems to be a new outfit
added to the premium store every time there is an update to the game.
Some of these outfits will add special features like wings, gadgets that
float next to you, effects that appear around your feet (like flowers
or water), or new animation skins (like replacing a glider with a broom). Certain bundles will be marked at a discount.
Character Creation: There might not be an option to adjust your body type other than whether you are male or female, but there are a list of other features that can be changed at any time available to you from the start. There is a good number of hair styles and a few glasses you can have equipped. By visiting any wardrobe decoration or changing rooms scattered across the world, you can modify both the top and bottom from a couple dozen free sets without spending any sort of premium currency. However, the game does tease you by showing what items you could buy that you don't own from the premium store.
Events
Promotions: Quite frequently, there are rewards for simply logging into the game. These can range from decorations to items. There are also a wide-range of Twitch rewards when you spend time watching a stream about the game for a couple hours. Nintendo Switch provides a few rewards for linking your account. You can Refer a Friend for five exclusive Chapaa cosmetic rewards. You provide them with an ID code they input upon setting up an account. Build 0.170 during October had an event shop for the exclusive Spooky decoration set. Build 0.174 during December also had an event shop for the exclusive Winterlight set.
Maji Market: This event was created during the Build 0.167 during August 2023. You can participate in the Chapaa Chase or complete achievements for exclusive tickets. This is the only way to obtain the Chapaa Hut and Maji Market decorations. The event was extended into the Luna New Year for another exclusive currency. These were the New Year decorations. Delaila's Sweet Treats and Reth's Street Specialties were two events that offered you exclusive foods that could be used for decorations if you obtained star-quality. Unfortunately, a bug at the time prevented players from having that chance with some of the items before the event ended.
The Underground: There are three ways to reach this hidden location - the sewers entrance by the ocean, the bookcase behind the cat's shop, or through the storage room under the inn (if you have a key). The area is filled with their own furniture shop. The vast majority of decorations that match the sets you can craft are exclusively sold here. These include paintings, rugs, and toilets. This is the only place to obtain the recipes to craft the Peltech decorations. There are two arcade machines that have you participate in some side activities. The Tower has you complete some extreme platforming challenges for achievements. Rage Against the Arcade Machine is a side-scroller that will net you a trophy for a score above 100.
Hotspot: In Build 0.180, they added this event to The Underground between 6PM and 3AM. AIs will take over any of the three other spots that don't have a player after 90 seconds. The mini-game is quite complex at first. Your goal is to obtain two sets and complete a third set by drawing a particular card that pairs with two other cards in your hand. There are 8 different colors that each have three ingredients. You can either draw from the pile or pick up from another player's discard pile. You then discard a card from your hand. The game rotates counter-clockwise and immediately ends when someone earns three sets. You earn gold proportioned to what cards you have at the end and one Prize Wheel Coin. The winner receives a total of two coins. Turn two coins at a time in the Zeki Prize Wheel for a chance to win ingredients, lucky coins, gold, arrows that shoot fireworks up in the air from the point it hits the ground, a rare chance for a plushie, or something from the exclusive Pirate decoration set.
Other: Once a day, you can find a pile of sticks within the valley and shipwreck debris near the beach. These rummage piles will provide you exclusive rewards for recipes to craft baskets or the exclusive Flotsam decoration set. Zeki's Wondrous Machine spits out a Lucky box in exchange for a Lucky coin. You can earn these coins in a number of ways but you can obtain one everyday through the mail when you buy a single item from Zeki's general store. You will be awarded one random item that ranges from ingredients, seeds, fireworks, and bombs. The Garden Variety and Valley Sunrise decoration sets are exclusively found here.
Activities
Experience: Before we dive into each of the skill categories, we need to evaluate how a player gains levels. Contrary to other games, a character does not have a stamina bar. You can continue gaining experience doing activities indefinitely without worrying about passing out or returning home. Because the amount of experience can be rather trivial, they instead provide you a Focus bar that offers you bonus experience. In the game, there are two shrines that modify this bar by donating 100 Renown per increment. The phoenix shrine determines what percentage the bonus experience will be and the dragon shrine expands the maximum amount of bonus experience you can have before requiring to gain more from eating meals. These values have diminishing returns and a maximum number of times they can be increased. Renown can also be used to buy housing writs that unlock property tiles and wallpaper at the Town Hall register. Renown can be infinitely earned through a number of ways such as raising friendship levels, completing other player requests, and completing achievements. The current cap was raised from 1,000 to 9,999 in the major 0.180 patch released back in May 2024.
Weeklies: Earning experience is important to unlock recipes from the merchants. But once you unlock them all at level 9, something new happens at level 10. You begin your journey through the guilds by accumulating tokens with each skill to barter for goods and a few exclusive decorations (wallpaper costs 200, plaque costs 100, a decoration costs 500, and another costs around 1000). Every level will provide you 10 tokens and completing challenges each week will provide you with some more. The amount of experience required per level with the guild will always be 5,000. For help on what furniture to craft, you can consult the discussion here. Challenges that ask you to participate with another member does not require you to be in the same party.
Equipment: Another deviation from other games is the constant need to repair your tools. While your initial makeshift equipment do not need to be maintained, any other type has a durability bar shown next to the icon at the bottom of the screen. Do not confuse this with the experience bar for skills at the top left of the screen. If that bar runs out, you will lose that upgrade completely to the point of needing the same material to upgrade again. In order to repair, you can pay gold at the blacksmith in town or crafted repair kits that can be used at any repair station in the world (including your home). A copper bar will be needed to make 20 or iron for 40. Each upgrade will require the appropriate skill level, the cost of the recipe, and the materials to upgrade. The number of uses for your tool is determined by the strength of the material. While the number of hits required to pull reagents only slightly increases for each upgrade, tools provide other uses. A bronze pickaxe will be able to mine iron and an iron pickaxe can break palium. A hoe will increase the amount of dirt you pick up. A watering can holds more water and spreads out a little more. A fishing pole will accumulate more health for your line. Bow upgrades do not increase damage but shoots the arrow farther. Belts increases the chance of successfully dazing your target. A bronze axe can cut medium trees while an iron axe can cut large trees. You can equip bait for your fishing rod, arrows for your bow, and bombs for your belt. You can purchase more ammunition slots at the store. The ones set at the bottom-left will initially be loaded into your equipment but can also be manually switched when you have the tool equipped and press the X-button.
Skills
Gardening: The amount of experience you earn depends on the number of days a crop grows and what type of seed you plant. However, there are many things that a player should be aware of when it comes to farming. You can only obtain up to 9 soil tiles. Each tile has a set number of squares you can scrape up with a hoe. The squares tend to reveal random objects and needs to be dug up again after 48 hours. Once you plant something, you cannot move the soil tiles. You can use the hoe to destroy crops if necessary. Each type of crop will have some sort of bonus applied to the ones planted next to them. Players have mapped out their designs to take advantage of the water retention perk. Blueberry and pepper bushes require a total of 4 slots and an apple tree requires 9 slots. This means that they must have more than one crop next to it with the same perk to receive it. In case you are wondering, the apple tree will disappear like a normal crop once done being harvested. If you feed ingredients into a worm farm, you can accumulate types of fertilizer to increase production. You can throw fertilizer on the plot without any crop multiple times to generate a queue when it gets used. Even if the dirt clears, the fertilizer will reveal itself again after using a hoe. The transition phase will always be 6am regardless of when you watered them within the last 24 hours. They will not wither if you forget to water them. If you have visitor permissions enabled, others can help water your crops or pull weeds for you. As a side point, you can physically hear the difference in volume of the amount of water coming out of your can.
Fishing: The only thing you need is a rod and some deep water. The type of fish depends on where you are fishing, the time of day, and the type of bait you use. Occasionally you will discover a Waterlogged Chest. Other than maybe finding them within the furniture store, this is the only way to collect the Makeshift Decoration Set. Fishing in hotspots is the only way to get a star-quality fish. These are the ones that can be placed down as decorations. Unlike typical decorations, they still count as storage. It might be good to place them inside the "lockbox chest" to prevent mixing them up with other items. Sometimes you will see a fishing buff appear by your vitals. This
happens when you catch a fish within 10m of another player and reduces
hook time 10% up to 50% total. Any player can fish once from a hotspot but the node will then disappear after two minutes. A tuning fork can be used to track these spots for 15 minutes. If you have full health upon catching something, you receive a "perfect catch" with a 20% bonus to experience. Failing to reel in a fish once on a line will not consume your bait. There are ultimately three separate categories with their own list of fish when not using bait, using worms, and using a glow worm. You can equip bait by pressing the button while your rod is out. Junk items such as ship fragments, wagon wheels, and waterlogged boots can sometimes be requested as gifts from the villagers. There's also a small supply of quests and recipes that include fishing.
Foraging: This activity includes gathering herbs and other items like wood after chopping down trees. After something is picked up by any player, items will last 30 seconds for common/uncommon, 2 minutes for rare, and 5 minutes for Epic. Flow-infused trees are rather rare and slowly regenerate health when you try to chop them down. The larger kinds will require additional players. There is usually a "grove" that appears at midnight somewhere in the bay that players will call out for assistance. You will hear an eerie sound and a large pink aura around the grove. Players tend to wait until approximately 3am for anyone who needs them. As long as you tag the tree with a single swing, the loot that falls from being completely chopped down will be shown anywhere on the map. Large trees have a chance to drop a seed that can be planted and watered. When fully mature, they will no longer need water and offer you a single seed to start the process again. Trees do count as storage and contribute to the 3,000 asset limit at your house. Trees do not stack in your inventory but do stack in your storage. Bushes provide plant fiber, pine trees provide heartwood, and other trees (not flow-infused) provide sapwood. The dowsing rod can be used to find rare herbs such as brightshrooms near ruins, dari cloves, the romantic Heartdrop Lily, heat root up cliffs, and any flow-infused trees.
Bug Catching: You won't be using a butterfly net in this game. Instead, you throw what feels like a pokeball at your foes. Bugs can be found in all kinds of places including rocks you mine, herbs you collect, and physically attached to the side of trees. A buzzy jar will show where to find rare bugs for 15 minutes. A honey lure will summon a large number of bugs in a small area. Ones that emit a sound and sparkle are star-quality bugs. Catching bugs is the only way to collect flower seeds other than spending guild tokens. Like trees, flowers can be planted and watered as decorations. Flowers do count as storage and contribute to the 3,000 asset limit at your house. Once they no longer can be watered, they will provide a seed to repeat the process. Unlike trees that have distinct names and icons to differentiate their growth in storage, a flower that is still growing will not stack with one that is fully grown in your inventory. There are also a handful of rare plush decorations that drop from specific bugs - garden ladybug, Lunar Fairy Moth, Proudhorned Beetle, and Lantern Bug. Silk Thread can only be obtained from rare bugs.
Hunting: There is no combat in this game. Your character does not have any health or armor. Instead, you are supplied with a bow to hunt down three different types of animals. A chapaa is like a small racoon and will disappear in the ground after awhile. The magical variant will summon three illusions. Sernuk are like deer that only try to run away for a short time. The magical variant will teleport a short distance away. Muujin are wolves that will run away for a short while until they find a tree they can hide in. Chop the tree down to see all the hidden ones scatter. The magical variant will turn invisible but still leaves a faint silhouette you can still hit. Use slowdown arrows to decrease their speeds or dispel arrows to remove their magic effects. A flare arrow will shoot a colored star into the air and emit a smoke trail downward to the spot it hits. A player can only have one active flare at a time that lasts three minutes. The color is chosen at random. Firework arrows are merely designed to be a fun cosmetic that doesn't do any real damage.
Furniture Making: While technically a part of decorating your house, there is a designated activity when it comes to crafting furniture. While stores do provide you a small number of recipes, crafting any will provide you a chance to learn one of three mystery recipes that share the same theme name. This process continues until you discover all the recipes in that group. Make sure to keep an eye on your focus as these items tend to devour large chunks of experience. There are more than a dozen sets you can craft this way that stylizes chairs, tables, clocks, beds, shelves, bookcases, and others with their own color and theme.
Cooking: Making meals in this game is much more complicated than you might expect. There are a total of five different types of stations. The initial campfire will provide you the simple one-time meals that take 15 seconds to make. Eventually, you will be able to cook more elaborate meals at the stove. Depending on the ingredients, you will need to hop over to the prep station to chop things into bits, mixing station to combine parts, an oven to bake bread, and back to the stove to stir it together. The recipe will automatically choose which ingredient by default but can be specifically selected within the sub-menu. You can examine the steps before you begin and reference the icons for what ingredients are needed at each station. You can make up to three of a single item depending on your success, how quickly you add ingredients, and whether you had everything available from the start. Advanced meals may require you to have two of each station, including a second stove.
Mining: The action of beating on a rock until things fall out is a simple one to understand. But if someone beats you to a node, then a "ghost" version with a white silhouette will pulsed at a faster rate until it disappears. Your choices include clay, stone that drops flint, copper that sometimes drop silver, iron that rarely drops gold, and palium. Depending on the node, there is a chance to find a certain kind of gem. Quality gems can be used as decorations. The amount you obtain depends on the size of the node: 1-2 small, 3-4 medium, or 5-10 large.
Multiplayer
Communication: Each region is divided up into servers. These include housing districts, village, bay, underground, festival, and the Tower challenge. You can speak to anyone on the server, those nearby, or whisper directly to someone. Simply by right clicking a person's name when they made a comment, you can choose to invite them to a party, mute them so you don't hear anything more from them, or block them with an added option to report them. There are also individual groups called "communities" that you can join for more personal communication. Anyone who opts into "looking for party" will have a small chat bubble next to their name. The chat channel generally shows up as English but does on very rare occasions have other languages. There is a list of emotes, with waving as the default, that helps bridge that gap in the game.
Shared System: As mentioned above, loot can remain in the world after someone interacts with it for some time. You can also accumulate "damage" on the same target and prompt weekly challenges if you interact with something that someone else has acted upon. However, the party system provides you with additional bonuses (and not just obtaining the growing furniture). All loot will now be shown and obtainable from any target. There is a small chance that the amount will be doubled after picking it up. This includes any wood or fish you might collect. There are three options available for each player when it comes to housing: no one visits you, only friends visit, or anyone can visit you. It is generally suggested to change your security features if you want people to come over to water your crops, check out your plot, or assist in cooking parties. An editor option can be turned on for anyone you might want to help move things around.
Request System: A player can send out a request for a particular item inside the crafting window or gifting window. Others will be able to see it for one hour (there is a timer visible). You can make a total of four requests per day. You cannot increase the set number of items inside a request. There is no limit on what you can request or mentioning them in the chat channel. This can be done anywhere in the game. The server will inform you on when someone does send you the item you requested. You must claim the item in the window. Sending items to public requests will provide you a single renown point no matter the value of the item.
Story
Characters: There are a number of villagers who will welcome your spontaneous arrival from one of the shrines. They will inform you on the current situation and guide you in becoming acquainted with the game mechanics. Some will announce when they have something available for you when you level up a skill. Others will provide side quests once you reach a certain level in their relationship. Each will provide you hints on what they or others might want as a gift. This will be visibly updated in your relationship status window (or online if you don't mind cheating). If you gift them a romance item (easily obtained by one of the quests), you will open up new options and dialogue regardless you are male or female. Gifts and flirting only count once a day and changes every Monday. The one exception that should be noted is that Einer will accept any pebbles that plug into your exclusive quest item storage. While they do wander around on the map, their location is always visible and you can converse with them at anytime. If they are asleep, you can knock on their private quarters. There is no wrong answer when it comes to which dialog choice you pick but there can be additional rewards (as well as future dialog) depending on how you answer. As a side note, I love all the farming puns from Badruu. An additional character will appear much later in the story.
Quests: There are quite a bit of tutorial quests available that show you how to make progress in the game. These can include making a glider, cooking meals, crafting furniture, upgrading your equipment, or visiting other villagers. The main quests will guide you through the four elemental temples that unlock the main mural in the Night Sky Temple. They can be excruciatingly difficult filled with things that don't unlock until later in the game. In the meantime, you might encounter some unconventional side quests from fishing or discovering items on the ground. Not all exchanges generate a formal document in your quest log and some might need you to gift items. You might need to interact with something within your quest item storage or reach a certain location before a quest progresses. A character will be highlighted on your tracker with an exclamation point when a quest is available or a flag if there is something important for you to check on.
Decorations
Interface: Each player has their own housing plot that can hold a number of decorations. There is a maximum capacity of 500 seeds and flowers. There is a maximum capacity of 3,000 assets (including trees, flowers, and seeds). Sections of your house can be unlocked by buying housing writs from City Hall. Any item in your inventory that can be placed down as a decoration automatically puts it on your cursor and initiates the mode upon pressing the optional button. Once changing your interface, you can pick up anything visually and move them around your area. There is a visible grid system that you can snap your item to that shows yellow lines for what's center and highlighted bars that help align them with other things. You can toggle the grid off if you wish to freely move things to the pixel in the environment. There is no limit on what can be placed inside or outside, but there are decorations that can only be applied to the wall. There is a third overhead option that allows you to place down structures (or move whatever you might be able to click on). Buildings must be provided material and time to complete.
Textiles: There are three different types of tiles you can apply to structures: wallpaper, floor, and roof. Merely have the item selected in your inventory and a sample of what might change will show on the screen. These items can be applied without being consumed. They can be removed the same way you would withdraw a typical decoration.
Interactions: You can sit in things like chairs and couches. Lights, torches, and braziers can be turned on or off. Wardrobes will prompt you to change your outfit. Cabinets and display cases can be loaded with items inside that open and close. Most items will have a grid where you can place other things on top. Chests will link you to your storage. There is a limited number of items with exclusive animations you can interact with.
Miscellaneous: There are no animals you can raise on your property. Various items such as milk and cooking oil must be bought from the store. You cannot ride animals in the world but sprinting increases your speed so dramatically that they aren't necessary. There are no seasons that distinguish the landscapes. You will never see it rain in the world. There is at least a proper day and night cycle. You can have an overflow in your inventory as long as there is something in the loot you already have in your bags. If the overflow extends further than the row provided, they will automatically be added to your house storage. Be cautious of the limited stacks compared to your storage - a single tree fills a slot and fish stack up to five.
Summary
Review: When you see a game that was given a large sum of money be released completely free other than some items that cosmetically change your personal attire, you begin to wonder if there is some sort of catch. There are a number of technical issues, unorthodox quest options, and decoration limitations but overall the game is phenomenally well-structured. There are some great characters, environment to explore, a story about an old civilization left in ruins, nice mechanics, good decorations, and a wonderful interface. You can easily spend hours cycling through the number of things you can do in the game. Perhaps the only concerns is how challenging it can be to establish a good income with how many things require initial investments and how difficult it can be to obtain the rarest of things. Otherwise, I completely suggest playing Palia when there is almost no risk in trying it out.