Your Top Questions About Palia, Answered
Photo by Alpha Tester Aurelia
This time last year, we here at Singularity 6 had just shared the announcement trailer for our first game, Palia. We had so many questions come in from excited players, and one year later, our community still remains deeply curious about the development of our game! Read on to learn more about the lore, gameplay, and how you can join our playtests.
About Palia
What is Palia?
Photo by Alpha Tester shoreless
Palia (pronounced pay-lee-uh) is a massively-multiplayer community simulation game set in a brand new high fantasy world with elements of open world adventure games. It’s a cozy and welcoming world that we hope fans of the community sim genre will love for years to come.
Our core gameplay loop focuses on developing a myriad of skills, including hunting, bug catching, gardening, cooking, fishing, mining, foraging, and crafting furniture. Improving all of these skills will contribute to building your very own comfy home and living out charming fantasies.
Above all, the social and cooperative multiplayer playstyles of Palia will provide a real sense of community and belonging. We believe Palia is good solo, but better together.
Will Palia be Free-To-Play?
Yes, it will! We have an entire blog dedicated to answering this question! To read the whole piece, visit: bit.ly/wizcrab
What Is the Lore & Gameplay Like?
The Story of Palia
In Palia, humans are the legendary race, having disappeared thousands of years ago at the height of their grandeur and mastery of magic. Nobody in the modern day knows why.
Until one day, humans begin to appear all over the world. As one of the newly re-emerged humans you’ll have to make yourself a new home in this friendly world, and forge a future for yourself and humanity. The story unfolds as you develop friendships with the people of Palia, a race known as “Majiri”. Each of them has a unique story of their own to tell as you embark on your journey to explore the greater mystery.
Palia has a deep, evolving story that we plan on telling (with you!) for years to come.
Combat in Palia
Many people have asked if Palia will have combat. While Palia won’t be entirely free of conflict, combat isn’t the core of the focus. Over time, we’ll have combat-like adventures, but players will be able to opt out of those experiences. And that combat won’t involve players fighting other players.
We want players to know that they exist in a low-pressure world largely devoid of physical, social, and emotional threats. As such, we feel that player versus player (PVP) combat is antithetical to our core experiential goals.
A cozy moment in Palia. Photo by Alpha Tester mushy
Having said that, we do believe that there are some competitive play opportunities that can make sense in our world, in large part because they’re the kind of light-hearted experiences we expect to find amongst family or close friends. A Sunday afternoon card game can be cozy. Racing on the beach can still feel like vacation.
Additionally, many of our core systems roll up quite naturally into an option for a little competitive play. We know we’ve spent a lot of time with our families watching cooking competitions, and those skills in Palia could make for fun gameplay opportunities.
The thing that will remain consistently true is that competition is not our core; any competitive options we add will not impinge on the core game experience, and we will strive not to tempt you into engagement with their rewards.
Costumes in Palia
Fashion is a big part of our game’s culture! But at launch, realistically, these will be pretty limited compared to our ambitions. Our plan is to constantly up our fashion game and give you everything from runway looks to hobo chic. We plan to allow you to change clothes from the available options fairly easily through any wardrobe furniture item, including allowing you to save outfit configurations for quick swaps.
Academy, Rogue, and Aristocrat by Sasha Frantseva. Concept art might differ from the final in-game product.
In general, visible “gear” in our game is purely cosmetic. There may be gameplay items that are visible, but they are not intended to interfere with any “look” you are trying to achieve. This gives players more choices to express their identity, rather than picking gear for the best possible stats.
How to Participate
Photo by Alpha Tester Ethella
We have not yet shared our release date, and are still in active development. Please make sure to follow us on Twitter and join our Discord to be the first to know.
Want to be a part of our playtests? We are inviting folks to sign up right here on our website! Nearly all of the testers we have invited have been selected from those sign-ups, and we’ve been engaging with them regularly in our Discord.
Our first Alpha wrapped up in March of 2022. Our playtests really help us understand how players feel about the game’s onboarding quests, discover visual bugs, improve performance, and also gives us insight into how Palia plays in a group over time.
We plan to invite more testers in each phase, but it is important to note that you will not see lots of information revealed from these tests because we are still under NDA. Palia is constantly improving with all of this amazing feedback, and we can’t wait to see you in Palia and hear your thoughts!
Do you have a question for the dreamers of Palia? Every month we answer questions right from the community on our Discord! Come join the party and catch up on the hundreds of questions answered in our #team-answers channel. Hope to see you there!