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.

(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 Morton
Associate Editor

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She accepted her role as Associate Editor 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.

Read more
An alien waters some cacti in Stars Reach, a new MMO that recently funded its Kickstarter.
Former Ultima Online lead says MMOs have 'been in a rut for a long time', and that cozy games like Animal Crossing have been filling a non-theme park hole
World of Warcraft The War Within screenshots
MMOs had a great year in 2024, with the genre the liveliest it's been in years
A fish-man looking stoic
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is an aggressively old-school MMO that hates hand-holding so much it won't even give you a map—but a certain type of player might just love it
Honey B Lovely
The state of Final Fantasy 14 in 2025: It's in a weird spot, huh?
Palworld Pal hammering on rocks with a pickaxe
'He was trying his best'—Palworld had a lone server guy trying to keep the game afloat during its 2 million player launch
Fellowship playtest screenshot of a bearded fantasy character wearing a white and gold robe.
WoW players should try Fellowship's dungeon-only take on MMOs—it's like a fast and breezy version of WoW's party play
Latest in Sim
An ancient, angry stone mech from No Man's Sky's new Relics update
No Man’s Sky lets you unearth ancient, angry mechs in the astro-archaeology filled Relics update
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode art
After 23 years of making Dwarf Fortress, even its creator is still 'terrified' of drowning all his dwarves with aquifers: 'Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames'
Tarn Adams, who cofounded Bay 12 Games with his brother Zach, talks about their single-player simulation game "Dwarf Fortress" during an interview at their home office in Poulsbo, Washington, west of Seattle, on December 9, 2022. - A cult favorite among indie game fans, "Dwarf Fortress" has been available for purchase on the Steam online store since December 6, a first for this title that has been distributed for free since its debut in 2006. The real-time management game, set in a medieval-fantasy world and involving overseeing a group of dwarves seeking to build a mighty fortress, has climbed to the fourth best-selling weekly title on Steam. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
Dwarf Fortress' creator is so tired of hearing about AI: 'Press a button and it writes a really sh*tty, wrong essay about something—and they still take your job'
Decorations in TCG Card Shop Simulator
TCG Card Shop Simulator finally adds the ability to decorate our stores, and suddenly all my profits are being spent on adorable Pigni posters
A person on a snowmobile riding a track in the forest in game Sledders.
Powder enthusiasts seem pretty pleased with new physics-based realistic snowmobile sim Sledders
Dean Hall at GDC 2025.
Outer space inspired DayZ's Dean Hall to become a modder and game developer, and now he's making a Kerbal successor called Kitten Space Agency
Latest in News
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event