Palia's first seasonal event adds exactly the kind of communal minigame I was hoping for

Palia - a player claps standing in front of a night market stall full of chapaa plushies

(Image credit: Singularity 6)

As both a life sim enjoyer and MMO sufferer, I've been quite invested in Palia's current early access period. Playing it right ahead of launch gave me high hopes for cozy MMOs in general, but I was still yearning for more MMO components on top of its crafting, gathering, and decorating chores. Palia launched its first seasonal event last night, a night market at the outskirts of town, adding exactly the kind of public event I had hoped for.

The event is the Maji Market, which is open each night in game, once per hour in real time. The market is its own new map area on the south end of town where you can follow a short questline solving mishaps around the market and buy special foods and decor items.

Crucially though, there's a nightly minigame where a ton of its small furry "chapaa" critters escape containment and everyone in the area competes to snatch them up and return them to their pen in the five minute timer. For each one you personally capture, you get 10 event tickets to spend at a stall of special chapaa-themed decor.

It's a bit hectic and perhaps not quite balanced—all three times I played I was competing for very limited critter spawns with a frantic bunch of 20 or more other players sprinting around the area. So my ticket earnings for the night were slim. But I like the direction: public events in the style of Guild Wars 2 or Fallout 76 are exactly what I said I wanted in my original impressions of Palia.

Palia - a player carries a red chapaa creature to a pen while other players do the same — (Image credit: Singularity 6)

The Maji Market questline took me about three in-game nights to complete but there are some longer term goals and stamp cards to complete in the "events" section of the menu with rewards like festival food recipes, decor, and some firework recipes. It's a small start, but a decent one that mirrors how I've been viewing Palia on the whole so far—a nice foundation for a nonstandard MMO with room to grow.

The Maji Market will run for a month, until Tuesday, September 26. You can find additional details about the event itself and other updates in yesterday's Palia patch notes.

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She joined the PCG staff in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.