Palia (PC/Steam Deck)

Palia may have come out on Steam (it’s also available on other platforms) in late March 2024, but I didn’t do anything with it (aside from adding it to my library) until earlier this year in January during a snowstorm after a few friends started playing and talking about it. Since then it’s been downhill from there a bit of an obsession (at least until I picked up Disney Dreamlight Valley around the end of March). I’m sure it’ll pick it up again when the mood strikes.

In this free fantasy life sim, you play as a human that’s suddenly re-emerged after disappearing centuries ago and try to make a life for yourself through various life skills like furniture making, ranching, mining, foraging, fishing, etc. There’s a storyline you can quest through and various NPCs you meet and develop relationships – some of which you can romance (if you so choose). Palia can be played mostly solo* or with others; with the latter, you get some perks like sharing loot.

*There are a few server-wide events that happen that require an additional person or a group.

Gameplay and Graphics

Palia reminds me a lot of games like Stardew Valley and Littlewood with the various skills that you can level up, while also bringing in a few MMO elements as well. There’s no time limit since you don’t sleep so you can take your time with things and explore the area – one of my most hated elements in Stardew Valley is how there’s a time limit which doesn’t give me much time to explore and the day continues to keep going even if I leave the gaming running for a few moments. Littlewood doesn’t have a time limit but it does have an energy bar so you’d have to sleep after your energy is low (Stardew does both).

Palia also has an “energy” bar of sorts but it’s set up where you get bonus XP and you don’t get penalized if you run out of focus since you also don’t die or get fatigued – you’d just end up with receiving the base XP only. Depending on your perspective, though, you could say you’re getting penalized since you wouldn’t be leveling up as quickly with an empty focus bar vs. a somewhat full one. Either way, it’s very chill and laidback – I can opt to spend a server day (which is about an hour) solely mining or foraging and then spend the next server day exploring the area and fishing or joining a few friends for hunting.

The servers are super small (I believe the maximum amount is 25), which I think helps with the laid-back and chill vibes and provides enough resources between respawns for players. The only things that really have a time limit here is cooking, fishing (kind of), and hunting (kind of). There’s time from when a player mines or picks up something from the ground for other players to also pick it up, and even if you end up missing out, there are always chances in the future to come across those items since they respawn (not necessarily in the same place, though). You can also request items from others as well, as long as you’ve acquired it once already. I’ve personally found it handy a few times when I’m short an iron bar or don’t have any luck with mining, or it’s something that’s a barrier for me to grind for.

One thing I liked a lot was the ability to server sync; the game tries to put you in the same server as your party members but you can always switch to a friend’s server or vice versa without having to create a new account on that server. Personally I find that a nice option to have since I can go to the European or Asia/Pacific server to play with some of my friends who are in those time zones but then I can go back to my usual server when my party members are online and it’s night across the globe. Most games I’ve played that have multiple servers keep those accounts separate, and they may sometimes prioritize one server over the other, so it’s nice to see this not happening in Palia.

I also like that you can get XP from other players when you’re within a short distance and in the same party, even if you didn’t chop down the tree or finish the kill when hunting or catching a bug. It helps a lot when you have motion sickness and doesn’t fully lock me out from playing. With party members, they’re marked by a green dot on the map so you can see how far you are from them. One thing I wish they’d add is the ability to distinguish friends from other players and party members, which seems like they may have thought of this considering how my name changes to green when I accept a request from another player and then change back to the default white later when I switch servers or locations. Occasionally it’ll also do that here and there, but it’s hard to tell when that happens since it’s rare.

The graphics for this game are absolutely beautiful, and while it is fantasy, you can tell Singularity 6 put a lot of detail and care into it (though they could work on some accessibility, which I’ll cover more later). I’m a huge fan of the cutscenes (which are few) – my favorite is definitely the ones from the recent Luna New Year event when you’re making a wish and retrieving it.

I also love the outfits for Palia that are available – the ones in the premium store, however, are paid but they are cosmetic along with the pets and toolskins so they’re not necessary to have. Personally, I would love it if we could buy them not just as a set, so pieces can be mixed and matched. I also think there should definitely be options for free players to receive other outfits – not necessarily earning any of the ones in the premium store (Singularity 6 does need to make money after all), but there is definitely a missed opportunity for crafting outfits.

One of the characters, Jel, has a fashion background and is the town tailor, so he’s just existing at the moment aside from being a romance option and being part of questlines. That being said, the game is still in open beta, so it’s very possible they have plans for Jel and a tailoring skill in the works somewhere, given that they added ranching in September 2025. But at the moment there’re limitations with the customizations and even with the premium store, a lot of the outfits are cutesy when it would be nice to have more neutral options.

Given that Palia is still in open beta, there are quite a few bugs scattered throughout. Sometimes I’ll finish a hunt and will see that I can pick up the loot from a certain distance but I’m not actually able to pick it up or see it (not even above me) or while climbing cliffs I’ll get stuck in the cracks (which thankfully there’s an unstuck button and I’ll just respawn to the last place I wasn’t stuck in, which I also think is a neat feature to have). Annoying as it may be, I love a good bug and always find getting stuck in the cliffs amusing.

Characters

The characters are a lot of fun to interact with, and I enjoy reading some of their stories and getting to know them as characters. Each of them have distinct personalities and you can develop a relationship with them, with some of them romanceable. Romance is only an option, so if all you wanted was to be friends with everyone, that’s also an option.

My personal favorite is Tau – he’s the absolute cutest plumehound (equivalent to a dog) and I love getting him little treats and pats (because what else do you do when you see a cute doggo in a game and can interact with them); not so much for his owner, though. Badruu is another favorite since he’s always full of dad jokes and puns, and I love a good pun. I also adore Jina, Ashura and Tish.

Accessibility

I will say some of the accessibility features are lacking Palia, though. Like a lot of MMOs, there’s motion sickness due to the camera movement and while there are settings, I personally didn’t adjust them too much (aside from camera sensitivity and maybe motion blur?) since adjusting settings unfortunately doesn’t help me most of the time, so some of the activities I was essentially locked out of playing*. Hunting, fishing, bug catching – those were the skills that I struggled with the most when I was going through the tutorial on my laptop, and I ended up quitting the game after about an hour of playtime so I could give myself a break. (I don’t think it’s a surprise that foraging is my highest skill level…)

*This is not the developers’ fault.

It helps a lot that I have friends who don’t experience these issues and are more than happy to party up with me and hunt for me when we’re online so I can get the experience and loot (party members within a small distance get it too), but some people prefer to go through the game solo. There are also channels in the Palia Discord server and other ways, but not everyone has Discord or wishes to join the server, and not everyone is comfortable asking random people on the server since there is always a risk of toxicity regardless of the game being played. My experience, however, has been mostly friendly interactions, though I spend a lot of the time alone in the game, but I can’t speak for everyone.

Playing with a controller or my Steam Deck does help me here, though (some games it doesn’t), which is a huge plus. I still experience a bit of motion sickness here and there, though, especially in Bahari Bay and the Elderwood so a lot of my activity even with a controller is limited to Kilima Village where you start out since I’ve upgraded my skills enough that I can one-shot (it involved a lot of chasing sernuks around that area, though…). Personally, I don’t find it a huge deal for me since I do have the option to do other tasks and not fully locked out from hunting or bug catching, and I can still upgrade my skills even while playing solo – just more slowly.

I also think the game seems to be more optimized for controller vs. PC, however, I’ve not tried it with a keyboard and mouse, which will likely be fine. On a laptop, though, I struggled with rotating tools, and it seems like aiming is a little off* even if I’m aiming correctly. This is a minor issue, though, as key binds can be adjusted in the settings. I’ve not explored this since I prefer to use a controller that I connect to my laptop or play on my Steam Deck (since I got it).

*This was before I started experiencing motion sickness and started getting annoyed so I decided to log off.

There are other accessibility issues as well I’ve noticed, like the flashes from the fireworks while playing hotpot (I think it’s similar to Rummy? I’ve not played it.) during the Luna New Year event that is distracting, and it already doesn’t help that oranges (spices) and yellows (veggies) are hard to tell apart. There are icons that help indicate as well in the cards, but I generally keep my laptop further away from me to help with motion sickness, so the icons are quite small for me. The flashes are realistic because in that scenario in the real world, there would be flashing from the fireworks that affect your view when playing any type of card game in the night. But I definitely think an adjustment could be made here.

There’s also the brightness and shine from some of the places like Bahari Bay where it’s a coastline. It’s realistic, but it’s also blinding when the sun is shining on the water and reflects – I typically have my brightness settings low on my laptop and Steam Deck, but I can’t imagine it isn’t worse for someone who has their brightness higher. There’s likely other issues as well that I didn’t notice since they don’t affect me. The Palia Discord server has a channel to discuss accessibility issues, though, so there’s definitely some effort from the developers to take in feedback and make improvements.

Other Thoughts That Don’t Need a Section of Their Own

Please enjoy my brief list of unfiltered thoughts that got edited to be more coherent. c:

• The treasure chests are a lot of fun, but I’m personally not a fan of how some are in impossible to reach places or in places that trigger my motion sickness. That being said, they’re optional, but I’d imagine they’d be frustrating for someone who also experiences motion sickness and is a hardcore completionist.
  • Once upon a time, I was a completionist, but these days I just chase achievements if they’re fun for me. I only go for the chests if I feel like going through with the challenge, and I come back to it another time if the attempts start getting frustrating.
  • The nice part about this is even if I give up on attempting for the day, the chests don’t move somewhere else.
• The storage limitations are pretty small, and the cost balance to upgrade to the next tier is quite unbalanced (in my humble opinion) for the amount of gold that you get. The basic storage chest (Wooden) is 500 gold and the next tier up is lockable, which is 1,000 gold. Not too bad. But then Copper (the third tier and arguably the second tier if we don’t count lockable) is 10,000 gold. That being said, it’s not exactly my first rodeo with storage limitations; you eventually learn what’s easy to get and what’s not easy to get, so you can figure out what you can sell and just get it when it’s needed. But it’s still frustrating.
  • It’s probably not too bad if you focus your first priorities on upgrading storage, but I do think going from 1k gold to 10k gold is a huge jump (better than what it was before though; it looks like it was 25k gold until 2024). You’re also limited to 8 chests.
    • This jump occurs with backpack upgrading as well, so I’m constantly running back and forth between my housing plot when I’m out on a hunting party with friends and carrying some food so I can get that sweet bonus XP.
    • 8 chests isn’t too bad further in the game when you go through most of the quests and completed all the upgrades, if I want to be honest.
  • You can join cooking parties through Palia’s Discord and Palia Party, which is one way you can earn gold since you’re in a group where everyone is pooling their resources together to make recipes.
• I love how there’s no combat or PvP involved, and I also love how you’re not necessarily “stealing” a resource from someone because there’s a time limit (depending on rarity) after the item is first taken for others to grab and they also respawn. Oftentimes, for extremely rare items, you might see people call out the location in the server chat.
  • I really like that I can mark a place on the map (called a Waypoint), which shows up on my compass at the top of my screen, which is really helpful when I need to run toward a server event happening or a place I want to come back to shortly.

Final Thoughts

This post turned out to be so much longer than I originally intended! Palia turned out to be an absolute time suck for a good few months. Like many traditional MMOs, there’s definitely some grinding that happens and things eventually feel repetitive, even if there’s a lot to do (in fact, the developers actually encourage breaks, too, with the loading screen messages); I haven’t caught up on questing at all since I focused on just doing things so I have a lot left but I’ve definitely gotten tired of just doing the same activities (some of my friends that I referred to the game* definitely take their breaks). But like with any game, I can easily take a break and come back to Palia at any time the mood strikes or when I want a low-stress game that I can just wander around in.

*No pressure at all to use my referral code.