the closed beta for palia has launched!! it's a free-to-play mmo in the style of stardew valley meets botw/totk zelda - basically what you imagine when you think cozy game, but massively multiplayer, lol. you get a farm plot with a house to decorate, there's romanceable npcs, ruins to be explored, bug catching that's a bit like pokemon, gardening and cooking, the whole nine yards, really! there's no combat (which i love), but there is some hunting, so you'll need to make animals "poof into smoke" to get their meat, pelts, etc., for crafting various item.
so yes, it IS free-to-play. those words worry a lot of people, and i agree that i always feel a tad disappointed when a game relies on that model to sustain itself. i could write a whole post about the games industry "these days", but that's not what i feel like writing about right now! 
HOWEVER! singularity 6, the studio behind palia, released a statement regarding their goals with the paid aspects of the game, and have confirmed there won't be any monetary gates on actual game progress - i.e., you won't be able to buy skips to craft something faster. all paid items will be purely cosmetic. this is good enough for me, for now. we live in a society.
moving on!! the screenshot above is my character in the game currently. i managed to rope a handful of my friends into playing as well, so i got all the cute refer-a-friend bonus items (pictured is the hat and sweater you get). you also get some furniture items and a glider in the shape of one of the critters of the world, which is both adorable and a tad morbid, lol. if you're interested in signing up, you can still use my code here if you'd like.
anyways, here's my thoughts so far on the game itself!
in palia, humans have been extinct for a long time. that is, until you materialize out of thin air because an ancient seal was activated and made... you, for some reason. you learn that the world is now populated by elves, robots, and... cat people?? everyone is perplexed (momentarily), but this seems to be happening a lot lately, so they just shrug and provide you a plot of land to put a tent down, and then the game begins. you have some initial quests to explore the ruins from ~whence you came~, but really, now it's time for... farming!! no, lol. that's actually not quite it. it doesn't feel like there's ONE right way to play. you can start by gardening if you want, or you can hunt, fish, or catch bugs instead. doing these things will give you materials, which you can then gift to the townspeople, and that will unlock more quests, and open up the world a bit for you. the materials are also used to upgrade your weapons, craft furniture, build out your home, so on and so forth. they also just give you some basic things to do starting out, like build a forge, make some copper bars, upgrade your pickaxe: you know, what you would expect from a game like this.
the art style itself i find pretty cute. the cat people seem to be kinda shady, so i love them. the one you meet in town initially runs the black market! the robots are all part of the "oneness" and seem to have an understanding of what happened in the past, prior to the events of the game, but aren't ready to reveal that information to you. the elves are basically just humans, lol. they are what mostly populate the world now, and i enjoy most of their designs. some of them lean a little too close to "pixar-y" if that makes sense, but there's enough distinction between the designs overall, so you don't end up in a situation where every girl looks like elsa from frozen and every boy is either finn from tangled or some milquetoast guy with a big nose. i get why they went with this general art style, what with all the fortnites of the world, but it's unique enough i don't feel put off by looking at the characters. (i'm kind of anal about aesthetics, lol.)
what i can immediately sing the praises of is the inventory/decorating system. all the storage units you build are connected automatically. when you're in a crafting station, you see all the materials that station uses - you don't need to have them on your character. when you're wanting to change the item being crafted, you can just drag the item into storage and put the new material in to be crafted, instead of having to hold the item in your character inventory, AND THEN put it in the overall storage chest. the decorating system is on a very elaborate grid, and the controls are very easy to understand. there's a "on the ground" mode, where you physically move your character around while holding items and can see them up-close as you're decorating, or a "top down" mode to make it easier to move around buildings, like changing the location of all your crafting stations, for example, more efficiently. basically, the wish i have with every game that has a decoration mode, palia fulfills. there's further customization options for furniture i haven't explored yet, but i find myself excited to see how everything builds on itself over time.
another big plus (for me, anyways) is that the only stamina wheel in this game is for climbing. there's sprinting and gliding, but unlike in zelda, no stamina wheel!!! stamina limitations in games that aren't zelda (and even in zelda) is super frustrating to me, so i'm very pleased that the main methods of transportation aren't hindered. there's also fast travel system from any bulletin board in the game, but it seems to be quite the gold sink currently, so i haven't used it. there is a "return home" button on the map, but it's on a cooldown (i forget the exact minute count), which doesn't cost anything, so regardless of where you are, you can return to your farm immediately. since the game is still in beta and they're figuring out the economy, i do hope they reduce the amount of gold needed for fast travel. the world isn't huge yet, so running from place to place isn't that tedious, but i could see it becoming more of a burden than a "fun adventure" eventually. i imagine there must come a time where your character is just drowning in gold, but i don't want getting around the world to ever be something i need to think too deeply about, you know? at least, not in this style of game.
overall, i'm really enjoying palia. if you're looking for something easy to do on the side while you watch an anime or some low stakes reality competition show (what i'm not talking about myself what do you mean), palia seems perfect for it. i also feel like it'll be a nice group game if you wanted to play something low key with your friends. you can make "communities" and have a chat for all of you, similar to how a free company works in ff14. just hanging out and building up your own houses together is fun enough for me (although you are able to give your friends complete control of your plot, if you're not one for decorating yourself). for later content, i would love if there were ruins you could explore with your friends and figure out the puzzles together, or maybe even ruins that are different based on how many people instance into them... hmhm!! since the game is still in beta, there's lots of kinks to be worked out, and i think the devs are listening to their community primarily on how to grow and build the game, so a lot of "what's to come" is still to be seen, but i can at least confidently say i am interested in seeing where it goes! also, did i mention it's very cute??
wowee, i didn't mean to write this much, but cohost just brings it out in me, i guess, lol!! it reminds me of writing in my livejournal when i was in high school and just blurting out all my thoughts. it's kinda fun! the only problem is that i never learned how to gracefully end my posts, even all this time later... uh... bye!!