Palia, a cute-looking life sim MMO inspired by e.g. Stardew Valley, has been in beta since last year, but now it’s officially out on Steam, where many more people can download and play it. With this launch comes a pretty substantial update – Patch 0.178, full notes here – which adds a new questline and Temple to explore, new furniture, and a bunch of new spring flowers and trees to grow in your garden. There is also a giant plushi frog, listed under ‘Adjustments’. The patch notes say simply “What does he want? Does he come in peace?” which makes him sound way more sinister than I think he is, but as you can see from the screenshot, he isn’t not sinister.
Palia is a game where you have a little home and garden and you make it all pretty, by entering production loops to farm, grow, fish, and all that kind of jazz. I say home and garden – you get an instanced plot of land and start off by building a tent, but this is where you’ll eventually be able to craft a mansion, and plant the aforementioned new spring flowers. You get the seeds for these by catching bugs in Kilima Valley, the seeds being a drop chance item upon said catching. Kilima Valley is basically the main area of the game, containing the town, and is where you encounter other players. And also the frog, which is very big, and a temporary addition to celebrate the culmination of a wishlist-on-Steam campaign. You can engage in a questline to get a mini plushie version of it for your plot.
The Temple Of Roots, meanwhile, is a new area with quests that can lead to, yes, new cosmetics or items. Previous temples were themed around the other elements (water, etc.), while the Temple Of Roots is apparently the plant themed one. Or, like, mud. Earth. You know, roots!
Interestingly, these elements are also assigned to dialogue options in the game, where you will be asked, e.g., ‘Do you like getting letters?’ by an NPC and the Fire option is enthusiastic, like hell yeah, I love letters! But the option to be like, ‘No, letters suck’ is the Earth response. Burn on earth, I guess?
I actually enjoyed the look and feel of the extremely short bit of Palia I just played solely to get the frog screenshot. The framing is that humans have been gone from the world for ages, and the purple pointy-eared natives are shocked that you’ve turned up. Palia also has a ‘Be Excellent To Each Other’ style ruleset that it shows you when you sign up, so I approve of that. The monetisation element is all for cosmetics, but they are quite expensive cosmetics still, despite some tweaks by the devs after player complaints. Guides Pal Kiera pointed out that a bundle of three outfits will set you back £40 actual pounds. Still, you can give Palia a go for actual free on Steam now. The giant frog is, genuinely, delightful.
