Bite Sized Reviews: Immortal Life

Plans change a lot. I planned to include this alongside my review of Our Adventurer Guild earlier in the week. However, I’ve been following this single review per article formula for a while now, and I’m finding it easier to focus on one impressions article at a time. My big Indie Corner series will return at some point, but only when I feel up to the task.

*Remember to consume copious amounts of coffee before typing up your rambles on games, Chum.*

Shut up, brain. Ahem. Hopefully, this will be more coherent than a few of my last reviews. Things have been a little hectic here in merry old England…. Merry. That’s the best joke I’ve told this year!

Anyway, we’ve got a bunch of upcoming reviews for you all over the coming weeks. Let’s School, Chromosome Evil 2, Soulash 2, Lightyear Frontier, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles and Terminator Dark Fate Defiance are just a few of my upcoming showcases! A few of these reviews will be a little late, but hopefully, they will help anyone interested in a British dude’s insane ramblings.

Today, I cover a quirky life sim RPG called Immortal Life, which fully launched from Early Access in January. While it had a rough start with some performance problems, most issues have been fixed, at least by my experience.

If you venture off the beaten path and wade into the Asian gaming scene, there are a ton of unique, refreshing titles available. For example, Amazing Cultivation Simulator is a Wuxia colony sim on the lines of Rimworld but packed with so many different mechanics that it feels like taking a PhD just to learn. I’ve spent 30-plus hours trying to learn that game, and I still have no idea what the hell I’m doing. The Matchless Kungfu is a bonkers open-world RPG that reminds me of Kenshi, and I’ve always enjoyed Sand of Salazaar. They can struggle with English localizations and jank, but I’ve loved exploring these different games. They often offer something refreshing.

Immortal Life left Early Access a couple of months ago, and I want to thank the wonderful developers at YiFang Studio for supplying me with a review code. It’s taken a lot longer to write this than I expected, so I apologize for the delays! With so much happening with restricted time, it’s involved a lot of juggling. I shall leave you with that hilarious mental image. I cannot juggle two balled-up socks.

Immortal Life is a Wuxia farming simulator that goes into a lot of depth, especially on the narrative front. Many games like it don’t really focus on characters and stories, so Immortal Life interested me as soon as I saw it. Yifang Studio pulled off all the stops in crafting Immortal Life, and their passion shows throughout the game. It’s a strange game in some ways, as it packs a lot into its modest package. While it is prominently a farming sim, it has some pretty deep gameplay systems for this genre.

While it’s not the most polished farming game out there, I can’t help but like it. It reminds me a little of Coral Island and Rune Factory. Despite my love for violent RPGs and simulation games where I hold the life of my colony in the palm of my hand, I’ve been a growing fan of relaxing farming simulators.

Things start off slowly despite the desperate beginning. After the village of the Guijyn Sect is nearly destroyed, it’s up to the player character to guide the village to recovery and greatness. This is carried out over an extensive storyline, and while the game is slow-paced, it’s a better game for that. After some introductions and tutorials learning how to farm, you’re mostly left to your own devices and you’re free to grow things at your own pace.

Immortal Life contains some nice quality-of-life features. The stamina system is generous, and there are save crystals scattered across the land, so you’re never too far away from a save point. At first, I struggled to locate these and got annoyed before I found them. Explore the map and don’t make stupid assumptions like I did!

Let’s talk mechanics! Farming and watering crops is rather enjoyable in Immortal Life. With magic and cultivation, I found the traditional gameplay loop less tedious. Along the classic farming mechanics, you can also fish, mine, and cook. While I like the fishing mechanic for the lack of irritating RNG from other games, the cooking mechanic is the most interesting. It’s like a lite version of Overcooked where you have to prepare meals from scratch in the right order. There are time deadlines to achieve the highest quality product, but I wasn’t penalized even when I completely messed up my cooking.

Dungeon crawling is another part Immortal Life does well at. The combat mechanics might be simple, but they are interesting enough to keep exploration a balanced challenge. Dungeons and caves contain rare materials, so it is important to keep player movement and combat in mind. I was always excited to delve into another cave, although I wish it had more melee combat.

Of course, no game is perfect. Immortal Life’s movement felt a little clunky at times. I found my character getting stuck on random bits of terrain occasionally, and there was no way to run. While the world isn’t particularly big, it can take a while to walk from one region to another. Sometimes I found performing tasks like farming and gathering resources requiring overly careful positioning to work properly. Like most farming games, resources are active on some kind of grid system where you need to properly face the item to access it. Sometimes it does require proper positioning, although none of these are major issues. I also had trouble locating people on the map, although that was just down with the NPC names.

One bigger disappointment was the lack of romance systems. While I got attached to many of the characters in the game (the writing is rather solid), the most that can happen is a housemate system where you can invite someone to live with you. A romance system was originally planned, but it got scrapped during development. I understand that, and it may be due to other factors. Many people were sad about the lack of romance in the game despite the strong character development, and a few might view it as breaking a promise. I know how development can go, so I relate as both a gamer and a developer. Sometimes things don’t work out. It is unfortunate because a romance system would improve Immortal Life.

Whew, this is longer than I expected, Immortal Life is a passion project. It has been a rocky road, but the result of the 1.0 release is impressive nonetheless. Farming games are some of the most difficult genres to stand out in, and Immortal Life offers some refreshing alternatives. This is an easy recommendation for anyone who likes this genre, but if you need to have romantic bonds in your games, it might be worth waiting. While romance isn’t in the game, the developers have made several large updates post-1.0 launch. Never say never…

On that note, this is a farewell from me for another few days!

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