It’s the holidays, and that means that it is time for Palia’s Winterlights event, the title’s in-game festival celebrating the time of year. An annual event, this year, the developers at Singularity 6 are looking to make it more interactive than ever. Today, the Palia team shared their Palia Path developer video, highlighting the upcoming Winter roadmap.
We got the chance to go a little deeper into Winterlights with Director of Production Maxwell Zierath and Head of Publishing Javi Carlos from the Singularity 6 team. From a new dynamic community event to what it takes to add new tints into Palia, and some housing elements, we find out what players can expect from the Winterlights and the rest of the Winter roadmap.
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Winterlights, like many of Palia’s events, has become an annual tradition. But players can expect new elements to get excited for. “I’ll start by saying, the two main things of Winterlights,” Maxwell Zierath said, “We have a Winterlights questline that you go with the villagers, and you give gifts that unlock ornaments for you to put on a tree. We put in work last year on this to make sure that it’s a replayable questline so that players can come in and do it again in the future, including returning players. Also, a staple for us is that Zeki has some hidden treasure chests around the world. Every year, we like to find new locations for them and add new hints.”
The Winterlights event is bringing back some staples and expanding in new ways too.
But on top of returning but updated staples, there are some new things ot be excited for too, especially when it comes to winter rewards. “We’re trying out variants of existing decor, snow-covered items that align with the winter season,” Zierath added. “The log cabin set, which we launched a little over a year ago, [now has] a winter snow-covered variant. So if you want to start to make a snow scene on your housing plot, we want you to unlock that capability. Those will be found in some of the treasure chests. And then completing the treasure chest quests will unlock your ability to buy some of the new items from within the Winterlights store.”
As a housing lover myself, Palia’s attention to evolving the housing plots has remained one of my favorite elements of the game. And adding snow to your housing plot isn’t the only way that Sigularity 6 is adding in more winter customization. He continued, “In addition, we’ve got things like icicles that can be added to your new home line houses, so they can be attached to and give you a little more festive player.”
But Winterlights is also continuing to take advantage of the new bulletin board to level up your housing plot with the Longest Night Feast quest. He added, “We also have our monthly quests that are themed around winterlights, where you’re going to help out Ashura and Reth pull off the Longest Night Feast. So you have got to get together some beautiful dishes, some holiday spirit decorations, and turn them into a bundle. Doing so is going to unlock string light decor as well. So again, leaning into, how do we give you the opportunity to decorate your house in sort of a festive spirit, a little more on the exterior side this time around, so those are sort of like the core of Winterlights.”
What really stands out for Palia is its embrace of community events, where every player moves toward a common goal. And of course, there is one for the holidays. Called “Grow-A-Snowman,” this new quest will run all patch long and tasks players with finding presents from Sandy Paws throughout the world.
Zierath said, “We’re sort of joking around that, like this character, Sandy Paws, which no one’s ever seen before, but he’s hidden his presents all over, and as players engage in various activities—you know, mining, gardening, it’s catching, hunting—they have a chance to acquire a present from Sandy Paws. Opening [the presents] has a chance of giving you a snowman [plush]. By the whole community across all of Palia working together and finding these plushes, as well as having some options to craft them, players will ultimately grow this snowman outside of Kilma Village to a massive version of it.”
“Each tier of that growth for the snowman will unlock rewards at the end of the patch for the community to get. So I think it’s a fun little play, sort of like spirit fest, where we did the candy drops, but in this case, we’re giving presents, so you get to open and see what you get,” he said.
While this isn’t the first time that Palia has tasked its players with building an object bigger by working together in a community event, the Grow-A-Snowman event does offer something more dynamic than what the Singularity 6 team has done in the past.
Javi Carlos added, “You might remember we did a Frogbert wishlist campaign when we launched on Steam, where the number of Steam wishlists grew the Frogbert plush. But this time, the snowman is going to grow in relative real time. Players will be able to actually see the progression of the snowman throughout the duration of the patch. So we’re really excited about that. It’s more dynamic and more in real time!”
Palia is all about community, and adding dynamic elements to community events helps focus on that.
When asked about the uniqueness of community events in Palia, Zierath said, “Being part of a larger community is one of the core things about Palia and what we want to have people experience. We want them to come in and join the Palia community, be part of it, work with each other to accomplish these quests.”
“The idea behind it was ‘how do we get the entire community together to achieve certain objectives?’ This is one of those things that’s been on our list for a long time. We want to pull [community events] off, where players can push things forward, together,” he said, talking about expanding the real-time component that players will see with the “Grow-A-Snowman” community event.
He continued, “We’re starting a little small here, ultimately. Let’s have everyone cook, or let’s have everyone gather plushies. And, you know, in winter, the snowman collection is the focus, and we love to see community engagement has been insane around them. Every time we do [a community event], we’re trying to figure out what the number should be for the goals. Because we can look at past data, but every time we do, people swarm to it! So now we’re like, trying to predict what the growth is. We love it! Sometimes we’ve been off, even by millions, and this was kind of interesting for community events.”
Aligning community events with patches is one of the elements of alignment that the Palia team thinks about, but in the process of discussing community events, Zierath also called attention to one of the larger criticisms for Palia: the fact that all communication comes through Discord.
“I think one of the biggest criticisms is you really have to be tied into our Discord community,” Zierath said. “We love our Discord community, but it leaves a good section of the community out, unfortunately. And so we are adding some new tools starting in this upcoming patch, as well as some subsequent patches that will let us communicate updates on those events more in real time.”
Community events require communication between developers and the community to keep track of milestones, and Singularity 6 is aware of that. He added, “I think for us, community events are becoming one of our regular plays in our playbook to bring to the community, and there’s some challenge on us to keep that interesting and exciting over time, but that’s the kind of stuff that we love to see and work for the community.”
Having been running since 2023, Palia has had to work to capture new players and give veteran players something to hold onto as well. A cozy MMO, Singularity 6 has continued to use each patch to dig deeper into the game’s systems. And now with this patch, the developers are approaching what a “battle pass” in Palia looks like, and more specifically, giving players a chance to progress and earn rewards the longer they play. And it’s called Lunar Paths.
Maxwell Zierath explained, “The idea of Lunar Paths is for Palia to have a sort of our Battle Pass-esque experience. It’s something we’ve had in the back of our minds for years now. It’s gone through like so many different iterations of what it could be, and what do we think is the right solution for a cozy game that makes sense?”
He continued, “We needed some kind of new marquee progression style experience, and it very quickly bubbled to the top of the list. In terms of, like, the thematic alignment, I think generally, we were just looking at how the kitsu is one of our popular pets. Players really love them. And asking how we can support them? And in similar ways to the choppa, I feel like it’s been one of our iconic little critters. As we go forward, we’ve got some new lunar paths that are really interesting. Some of them are a little out of left field, I’ll say, [in terms of their] thematic concept. From my standpoint, the technology under it is really useful and powerful.”
Lunar Paths are adding more progression for players in Palia.
Lunar Paths give a progression element that has been on the developer’s minds for quite some time, Zeirath added, “There are definitely things with lunar paths, too, with progression, that we think will strengthen this feeling of giving players objectives they can continue to pursue. It’s a thing we always like to self-critique: how do we provide better clarity on long-term objectives for players coming into the game?”
But one of the most sought-after elements for players, if you take a look at r/Palia, are tints. And the developers know that. With this new patch and Winterlights celebration, the developers shared that the tint rework will expand the customization of the game. And when asked about what he was most excited for, Zeirath was all in on tints. And the tint crafter is expanding to help highlight what players have unlocked and what they can aim to unlock next.
“I’m personally excited about the tint rework we have,” he said. “We’ve been wanting to touch this thing for years, and we have finally gotten around to it. And so the thing that I’m really hoping it unlocks is an opportunity for players to have new reward types that are really compelling, even early in the game.”
He continued, “So I can get a tint by investing in my gardening experience, and that results in something completely different from what other players necessarily have access to. And the other thing we’re doing with tints, too, is trying to expose some of those tints earlier to players so that they can self-select objectives. Maybe they really like a color, and they see it. And we’re trying to communicate, ‘Hey, this is where you go get it,’ so that they can go chase that and create their own goals.”
More tints are on the way in Palia’s next patch.
While more tints have been a big ask, Zeirath explained how difficult it was to pull off from a development standpoint. “We’ve been eyeing that for so long. Of like the system under the hood, like, from a tech standpoint, it was really solid. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t a good experience from our perspective and the ability. And we know our players have wanted more tints, but it was just really difficult to do them right now. With our updates, now we have a reason. And similar to animal husbandry, where we started shipping animals every patch, we want to ship tints every patch.”
But more tints every patch is a reason to get excited, and that starts with the Winter roadmap. Zeirath said, “We really want to unlock a lot more color potential and see what players do with that in their homes. And we expect, you know, that to us, that’s like a massive multiplier on what is over 600 pieces of furniture that can be tinted in the game right now. So every new tint is 600 new potential things for players.”
When it comes down to it, Palia is a cozy game that has continuously worked to expand its systems to meet players where they want to be. With the launch of animal husbandry this year, Singularity 6 was able to add a core feature that many cozy game players look for. And now with Lunar Paths influencing progression for longtime players and new players alike, and a major tint rework coming in the Winter roadmap, it’s clear that the game is aiming to continue to meet players where they’re asking to be met.
Palia’s Winternights Event and patch will begin on December 9, 2025.
