Daybreak Backs Expansion For Unfinished Game

Anyone remember Palia? It was going to be the Next Big Thing for a while and then, like Nightingale and so many others, people got to play it and suddenly no-one was all that interested any more.

Like many of those under-cooked, released-to-soon titles, it's been plodding along, catering, I imagine, to a small cadre of die-hards, who find in it something they can't easily get elsewhere. Along with the regulars, in these half-forgotten games there's also usually a trickle of returnees, coming back to see if anything's changed.

Well, it has. Quite a lot. In fact, Palia just got its first expansion. It's called The Elderwood and here are the bones:

The Elderwood Expansion includes an entirely new Adventure Zone, our first since we launched, which contains a whole new map filled with new content for every skill in the game, new gameplay systems for players to experience, and another chapter in our main story.

At the highest level, this update brings the following changes to the game:

• A new map, the Elderwood, a lush overgrown forest seeping with magic.
• A new chapter of our Main Story.
• A new Villager joining the cast of Palia.
• The introduction of Infected Essence, a major focus of the gathering experience in Elderwood.
• The search for Artifacts and ability to craft Relics, a new equipment type that provides buffs to not only yourself, but your party.
• New Gatherables, including a new wood type and forage you can knock down.
• Changes to mining, making Palium a more abundant resource and introducing dedicated mining nodes for Gold and Silver.
• New Huntable Creatures (and plushies!)
• New Insects, including a frog-like critter called the Rockhopper.
• New Fish, including some ferocious sharks.
• New garden crops found within the Elderwood.
• A new set of Cooking Recipes that make use of everything in the Elderwood.
• Our largest single patch of decor, including multiple new furniture sets.
• The introduction of Courier Pets to the game.
• And last but definitely not least, decor limits have increased on the housing plot from 3,000 to 3,500!

If you need more, the full - very full - patch notes are here. 

I've been looking for an opportunity to mention Palia for a while now, ever since I bookmarked this post at MassivelyOP. I've had it on the shortlist for a Grab Bag for a month (To the day, in fact.) but so far it hasn't made the cut. Today's the day.

The pull-out quote from Bree's interview with Palia's developer, Singularity 6, which she used as the title of the piece, is "Daybreak made Elderwood possible". Gee, it's just like the good old Sony Online Entertainment days, isn't it? Remember when SOE was the place old MMORPGs were put out to pasture? And then, just as they thought they were safe, "sent to the farm" when the Sony Home Office finally noticed what was going on...

Actually, did they ever buy any third-party games other than Vanguard? I know they published a few but that's not exactly the same thing.... 

Scenery looks great.
My character looks plastic.

But this is all getting a long way from the point, which is that, thanks to Daybreak stepping in, Palia isn't just plodding along any more. It's growing. A new expansion and new platforms, too. The game has been available on the Switch for a while but as of this week you can also play it on PS5 and XBox X|S. 

IGN re-reviewed it very favorably a couple of days ago, calling it "endlessly relaxing and incredibly hard to put down" so it seems to be getting fresh attention, something it certainly needs. The game currently doesn't even have enough critic reviews for a MetaCritic rating and that only takes four. 

After two years, Palia has just two professional reviews listed at the aggregator (Presumably soon tobe three if that  new one at IGN counts.) Both are for the Switch version. The PC game hasn't received a single review from a recognized critic or publication in a year and a half but then the game is still in Beta so maybe everyone's waiting for the official launch.

Which makes me wonder. Can games in Beta or Early Access get expansions? Is that possible? Isn't anything added in beta just more core content? Do any of these labels even mean even anything any more?

Don't know and frankly don't much care. Whatever it calls itself, Palia is doing okay. Better than expected, certainly. As I write, there are just under twelve thousand people playing it on Steam. The game hit its Steam peak concurrency with the launch of Elderwood two days ago - 17,508, which is five thousand more players than it got on its original opening day.

I was one of that first influx of excited players back in late 2023. Well, I was more curious than excited, I guess. I was looking forward to playing, anyway, but although I gave it a few sessions, I never really got on with the cozy sim part of the game and there wasn't a lot else going on. I could overlook the  unfinished feeling, naturally, the game being in beta and all, but it felt dull and that's much harder to forgive at any stage of development.. 

Ididn't uninstall though and I have been back once or twice, just to see if it felt any better. When I did, not much seemed to have changed, so I wasn't expecting a lot when I patched up and logged in today. I was pleasantly surprised.

I don't remember fast travel from last time I played. Sadly, still no actual horses.

I'm not going to do any kind of "Second First Impressions" on either the expansion or the game. I haven't seen enough for that. I did go to the new zone to take a look around and I even picked up a few quests there but I only played for a little under an hour and a half. And of that, at least half was spent handing in old quests, claiming the huge amount of freebies waiting in the mail and fiddling around with my house.

I do have a handful of observations to make, even so. Firstly, as you may be able to tell from the screenshots, the new zone looks radically different from the old ones. Much more dramatic, weird, colorful and fantastic. It's also very dark by comparison, although darkness is a relative term in Palia, where you can always see pretty well, even in the dead of night. 

Elderwood felt more dynamic, too. There seemed to be a lot of mobs moving around and doing things other than running away. A whole load of large salamander-like creatures kept spitting huge gobs of green goo over me for a start. Palia doesn't have any actual combat per se (As far as I know...) so it's not like I was at any risk while I was exploring but it did feel different, having monsters behaving aggressively, even if there didn't seem to be a lot of bite in their attacks.

A talking chair gives me a quest. (Actually it was a tiny piksii hiding in the upholstery.)

The whole vibe of the game felt somehow different in a way I couldn't quite pin down. I know I was only there for a short while but not once did I feel the kind of ennui that, in the past, has swept over me within minutes of logging in. 

There seemed to be a lot more to do, for one thing. I didn't have to go looking for quests or speak to everyone in town to find someone who wanted something. I picked up several quests just from examining objects in the world and I found a couple of chests that needed some climbing and scrambling to reach. 

Because I've barely touched the game since the first month, I have no idea how much of the change in atmosphere is down to the new expansion and how much come from incremental changealready in place but whatever the provenance, the game certainly feels different. It feels more alive but also more like a game. 

I don't imagine it's going to be enough to encourage me to keep logging in but that has more to do with my current disinclination to play games in general than any shortcomings in Palia itself. Based on my brief dip into the game today, though, I would say that if anyone's been thinking of giving Palia another try, this might be a very good time.