Palia is the newly announced game from Singularity 6, a studio made up of former Blizzard and Riot developers, as well as many others. The game is said to be inspired heavily by several games, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the way it brought people together during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as its coziness.
Pocket Camp is another game in Nintendo's hit series that is quite a bit less popular, but it's possible that Palia may take many elements from it, especially in terms of monetization, which has yet to be announced. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is the mobile spinoff of the Animal Crossing series, and some fans say that it's stronger in terms of customization than New Horizons is.
Why Palia May Be Inspired by Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
In the same way that players can invite friends to their islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players can invite friends to their campsites in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp as well. However, campsites, of course, are much smaller than entire islands. There's less room for players to decorate but furniture can still be placed outside as well as inside the cabin, where villagers can also visit. Singularity 6 plans to add player invites and customization as major elements in Palia.
In some ways, customization in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is less limiting. While New Horizons introduced the concept of terraforming, allowing players to sculpt the land and water to their desire and resulting in some beautiful and strange islands over the last year, Pocket Camp has many more furniture options available. This has given Pocket Camp more longevity that New Horizons players have been asking for. The only new, paid furniture packs that have released for New Horizons are what comes with the Sanrio amiibo cards. Otherwise, Nintendo has released a few new holiday and seasonal items, and that's about it.
Pocket Camp, on the other hand, introduces new decorations and furniture every so often to keep players interested in the game. If Singularity 6 wants to keep players interested in the MMORPG for the long haul, it might be worthwhile to do something similar to Pocket Camp, whereas many New Horizons players have put the game down due to the lack of new content.
Palia also has yet to determine how crafting works. In some games, like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley, crafting items happens instantly. But other games, such as Pocket Camp or ones with mobile elements to entice players into returning to the game later on, crafting can take anywhere between minutes up to multiple days. While Singularity 6 is keeping crafting a surprise for now, it does allude to "times" on the official Discord, saying it wants players to give feedback "on those times." So, it's possible Palia may be more like Pocket Camp than New Horizons in this way.
Palia's Payment Model
Palia's price model is one of the biggest questions fans have right now as it has yet to be announced. Singularity 6 hasn't given any hints, and when it comes to other MMORPGs and the many games that Palia has been inspired by, there isn't a clear-cut answer. However, it's less likely that Palia would have a base price of $60 or $70 like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and would make more sense to be free-to-play with microtransactions like Genshin Impact, or both. After all, most modern MMOs have microtransactions or subscription fees. On top of that, if Palia does make it to consoles, players will have to pay subscription fees for online services through Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft.
Because of Palia's customization system that's said to be quite extensive, players could see microtransactions in the form of purchasable furniture packs, similar to Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which has attractive sets on rotation that require buying Leaf Tickets, its premium currency. In this way, similar to the Sims games as well, Palia may release DLC from time to time to keep players intrigued.
Palia is currently in development.