Palia Beta: Cozy MMO Vibes

The Palia Beta has been running for just over a week now. I’ve had my eye on this title ever since I first heard about. A cozy MMO with no combat? How will they pull that off? Having spent a decent amount of time with the game I have some answers to that question.

I can already tell that I’m going to be using the thesaurus heavily for synonyms of ‘cozy’. Because that’s what the Palia Beta is. It’s a warm comfort blanket where there’s no rush or even real competition to do anything.

What is there to do in the Palia Beta?

There’s two main gameplay loops: relationships and housing.

With so many NPCs, Palia has lots of relationships to build, with some having a romance option. The more you talk to them, the stronger the relationship. Gifts are a must to quickly develop relationships. They have their likes and dislikes, as well as a rotating weekly roster of gifts for an extra boost.

Housing is where it gets more in depth. Players start off with a simple tent but it doesn’t take long to start building a house. A simple one-room affair to begin with, additional rooms can be purchased and decorated as the player desires. Other buildings become available as gamers progress, such as a windmill, all of which can be placed on your own plot of land.

Time to upskill!

The Palia Beta has 8 skills: Foraging, Mining, Gardening, Cooking, Hunting, Furnishing, Insect Catching and Fishing. Each has its own level, with experience coming from using that skill. There is a mechanic called Focus that grants bonus experience. Gaining Focus is as simple as eating food.

The more you use a skill, the better the tools that become available to you. Levelling up Mining will allow you to craft better picks, which in turn make for quicker gathering of stone and ores (as well as enabling you to mine better ores). Foraging herbs and mushrooms and cutting down trees unlocks better axes.

Increasing a skill’s level also unlocks new recipes. These can be anything from equipment to make crafting easier to new furniture for your house. Levelling up Hunting will unlock recipes for stronger arrows, letting players hunt tougher prey easier.

But what makes it so cozy?

All of the above combines into a game that is just so hecking cute and comfy. The game is about kitting out your plot of land and the relationships you build with the NPCs. But it’s the non-competitive aspect of the game that’s the nicest part of the game.

There’s no real competition for resources as server populations are kept fairly low. Even if players find themselves gathering the same resource, all that happens is the resource takes less time to harvest and both players receive it, even if not in a group.

I found myself at times wanting a place where I could sell my excess resources but that would undermine the request system that the Palia Beta has in place. Players low on resources can request items from other players. In fact, it’s even an early quest. It makes helping friends (or random Palians) easy, especially with the sorting by friend, community, and others.

The Palia Beta has been a joy to play. It’s something I can lose myself in for hours. I’ve fallen in love with decorating my house (something I’m not usually big on) and catching up with the locals is a lot of fun. And with progress in the beta moving over to the full game, there’s no fear of players losing progress.

The Palia Beta is available now for free on PC, with a Nintendo Switch release coming at the end of the year.