Highlights
- Palia is a unique combination of cozy life sim and MMO genres, with a focus on community building and multiplayer gameplay.
- The game's current state is bare-bones and needs to make significant changes to continue its success.
- Palia needs to expand its open world, come to more platforms, improve its hunting mechanics, and make its furniture interactive to engage players and ensure longevity.
Palia entered open beta in August, bringing its vision of a cozy MMO to PC gamers. The game is supposed to launch on Switch later this year and has been gaining traction due to its unique combination of genres. While MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 are popular, and cozy life sim games like Stardew Valley are as well, Palia is a rare combination of the two. With a focus on community building and multiplayer gameplay, Palia has introduced several new ideas to both genres, but if it hopes to have continued success, it needs to make some big changes.
The foundation of Palia is cooperative life sim gameplay. Together, players can build homes, craft items, gather resources, hunt, and fish. Exploration is also a big part of Palia. One of the game's most charming features is its Flow Trees, which require multiple players to cut down. Other tasks in Palia require multiple people to complete as well, encouraging players to build communities with one another contributing to the game's cozy vibe. While these mechanics are engaging and innovative, the game is bare-bones in its current state, and developer Singularity Six needs to ensure that the game keeps growing.
Palia Needs More Zones
One of the ways that Palia can grow is by expanding its open world. As of now, the game has two main zones with places to explore and gather resources. While exploration is not one of the key pillars of the game, MMOs are theoretically endless, and the game's world isn't large enough to keep players engaged forever. Many of the best MMOs have huge worlds packed with optional content, and Palia needs to follow suit if it wants to find success. Since the game doesn't have raiding or difficult high-level content, its world needs to be bigger and filled with more things than the average MMO.
Palia also needs to come to more platforms. While the PC and Switch have substantial player bases, the game is niche and would benefit from being more widely available. Additionally, the Switch is aging, and how the Switch version of Palia will run on it remains a mystery. After 10 years, Final Fantasy 14 is coming to Xbox. While Palia is a much smaller game, skipping PlayStation and Xbox systems would be a mistake that could hurt the overall player base size and the game's longevity.
Palia's Hunting is Half Baked
While hunting is a big part of Palia, its implementation is currently weak at best. The game features two types of huntable creatures, each with three variants. While hunts must be simple to keep things cozy, there needs to be more for players to hunt. Since players hunt for resources, the lack of different creatures means that there is little sense of scarcity. Expanding hunting in Palia will help to make its resource management aspect more engaging as well. New huntable creatures could be localized to certain parts of zones, encouraging exploration and making the world feel more alive as well. Fishing in Palia is more intricate, and the hunting should be updated to meet the same quality standard.
Another simple change the Palia can make is updating furniture to be interactive. While players have plenty of things to craft for their homes, it's mostly just for show. Not being able to use furniture diminishes immersion, especially in social situations, which is a big draw for MMOs. Palia needs to make its world and the objects that occupy it more interactive for its players. While Palia is still in its early days, there are plenty of lessons that Animal Crossing and other cozy games can learn from it. Palia stands out among other games in the genres it pulls from, so hopefully it can keep growing and innovating.
Palia is now available in open beta on PC.
