Starting next week, players of developer Singularity 6’s Palia will be able to dive into the cozy MMO’s first limited-time event called Maji Market.
In a hands-off demo with IGN, Singularity 6 shared the first details about Palia’s first live-service event, which will add a small new region to the map centered around a night market.
Available in-game starting on August 29th and running until September 26th, Maji Market will take place at night (which occurs once per hour given Palia’s one-hour days) in the Kilima Village Fairgrounds.
Attendees will be able to partcipate in various festivities, like completing new quests, trying night market delicacies, collecting themed furniture, fishing, and more.
The biggest new activity though, The Chapaa Chase, happens once a night when the festival’s resident groundhog-like mammals break out of their petting zoo and players work together to wrassle as many as possible back into their cages.
As a team, the entire server will get tickets based on their individual performance during the event, which will be tracked and displayed in a leaderboard at the chase’s conclusion, adding a light coopetition element to the activity.
Taking part in the Chapaa Chase and other Maji Market activities will earn players tickets that can be spent at the events vendors to unlock exclusive items, like chapaa pillows and plushies to decorate your house with.
This limited-time event also introduces a new Event tab to the menu, which hosts stamp cards that can be filled up by completing the event’s bounties to unlock their rewards.
Interestingly, some of Palia’s characters already made reference to a night market long before this event was ever announced, which suggests that perhaps other hints may exist for players to speculate on what might come next for this cozy MMO.
For those looking for a more explosive reason to visit the market, the event will also offer some new fireworks that do some pretty wild stuff, like turn into a dragon that shoots fireballs or summon a phoenix that blazes a fiery trail through the sky — apparently we’ll be raiding Gandalf’s firework supplies for this one:
With Palia still in its beta, it’s certainly unique for an as-of-yet unreleased game to be receiving limited-time events, virtually unprecedented in the live-service space, but Singularity 6 told IGN that they hope to use these early events to gather feedback
Though the night market is only available at night, the new fairgrounds area will be available to players around the clock and offers space to partake in some of Palia’s existing activities like fishing.
Singularity 6 told IGN that Maji Market is only the first of many limited-time events, and that those who miss out on the event this time around will be able to join in on the fun later, as they intend to bring it back at some point.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.