Recently, a strangely hostile side appeared in the super cozy life simulator Palia — and I’m not talking about the hidden card pit under the tavern. The developer of Singularity 6 recently added a cute and straightforward card game called Hot Pot for players to enjoy as another fun diversion in Star Dew Valley-“play-a-game” style gameplay has exposed a divide among gamers.
Palia takes place in the cozy Kilima Village, where players can socialize with the townspeople, farm, cook, or explore the nearby, bustling Bahari Bay. At night, an underground market opens beneath the town store. The store’s owner, a cheerful smuggler cat man, runs the night market from 6:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.
Here, players can find fancy recent toilets, rugs and paintings for sale or go fishing with friends. The main attraction, however, is playing the Hot Pot card game. The game rewards one coin, winning two, and after the game is over, players can line up to spend their coins on the prize wheel. A single spin of the wheel costs two coins, and players can win high-quality cooking ingredients, cute stuffed animals or frigid pirate decorations.
Many players enjoy using the underground market as a tranquil social stop. After hunting in Bahari or talking to all the residents of Kilima, it can be nice to relax with a little Hot Pot. The minigame isn’t particularly demanding or competitive; you go around a four-person table, trading tiles until one player collects three sets of three matching tiles.
Image: Singularity 6 via Polygon
A certain faction of players, however, prefer to play “fast” games, moving around the table as quickly as possible. When one player is close to winning, they shout out the card they need, and someone else at the table replaces it. This style of play is designed to produce as much coin as possible. If people share tiles, there are no prolonged stalemates at the end of the game, and everyone earns more coin. And when one brisk table sets up and starts filling the table chat with shouting, it can lead to a fight.
Over the past few days, I’ve had a few warm pot sessions interrupted by arguments at neighboring tables. The dialogue usually boiled down to “Hey, you’re cheating!” and “No, we’re cooperating.” Of course, a public argument is counterproductive even at the best of times; one in an online game, where everyone is subjected to each other’s words because of proximity chat, rarely ends well. Everyone in Palia is polite on the surface, during the day. But at night, quick debates can break out at the table, and before you know it, the chat is full of accusations and tasteless insults.
This argument is part of the tension Palia; it’s an online sandbox that aims to foster community, but it’s also a very laid-back and subdued experience that’s often best enjoyed solo. It works for the most part, and the player base is very well-behaved. After Hot Pot games, players line up to spend their coins and spin the wheel, and running up to join a game at a table that already has four players is considered a faux pas. But the quick-fire debate at the table threw a spanner in the works for the usual etiquette and politeness, and I’m curious to see how — or if — Singularity 6 will handle these competing priorities between players.
