Immortal Life Review Summary

Stunning art and a satisfying farming sim with a fun cooking mini-game, but bogged down by slow movement, clunky controls, and a lack of romance.

Gorgeous art style: The game's art and graphics are consistently praised for being beautiful and charming. The visuals create a calming and pleasant atmosphere.

Excellent farming sim: The game is regarded as a great cozy farming sim with rich content and a unique atmosphere. It combines relaxing gameplay with satisfying progression.

Fun cooking mini-game: The cooking mini-game is highlighted as a fun and engaging feature, often compared to Overcooked. Once understood, it becomes one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.

Magic farming system praised: Players love the magic-based farming that replaces traditional tools like watering cans. Spells for sowing, watering, and harvesting reduce tedious work and make farming satisfying.

Overall great game: Many players find the game strong, fun, and beautiful overall. It is described as an amazing gem that is worth playing.

Slow movement speed issues: Players consistently report that the base movement speed is too slow, requiring constant use of consumables like food to boost speed. This makes exploration feel tedious and frustrating.

Clunky controls: Controls are described as slightly clunky, stiff, or inconvenient for both controller and keyboard/mouse setups. Key bindings and controller support are also poor.

No romance system: Many players note the lack of a romance system, despite some expectations or developer promises. While a few consider it unnecessary, the absence is a common complaint.

Overwhelming quests: Players complain about too many quests, many of which feel meaningless or lack proper guidance. The quest overload starts from the beginning.

No post-launch updates: There have been no updates since full release, with players expecting no future updates, leading to concerns about ongoing support.

Farming simulation with cultivation: The game is primarily described as a farming simulation set in a cultivation world, blending farming mechanics with xianxia or wuxia elements. It is compared to Stardew Valley but with Chinese themes.

Comparison to Stardew Valley: Many reviews describe the game as a Chinese or eastern-themed version of Stardew Valley, blending its farming and life simulation with cultivation or wuxia elements.

Diverse gameplay activities: Players enjoy a variety of activities beyond farming, including cooking, fishing, mining, combat, crafting, alchemy, and festival games. These activities add depth to the simulation experience.

Magic-assisted farming tools: The farming system includes spells for sowing, magic tools for watering, and artifacts for mass harvesting, making farming more efficient and fantastical.

Cooking mini-game system: Cooking is a detailed mini-game with many recipes, often involving a timer mechanic that determines star ratings. It is considered a serious gameplay element.

Frequent crashes and freezes: Players report frequent crashes, freezes, and freezes within the first hour and during specific actions like giving gifts. This is a critical stability issue affecting overall enjoyment.

Performance issues with lag: Game lags when planting many crops, from particle effects, and stutters periodically requiring a restart. These performance problems disrupt the gameplay experience.

Bugs causing progression blocks: Bugs throughout the game can block progress, severely hindering player advancement and causing frustration. The issue is broad but impactful.

Display issues on high resolution: No 4K screen support and full screen mode being cropped and blurry indicate poor display scaling, affecting visual clarity on modern monitors.

General lag problems: Vague but prevalent lag issues reported across multiple clusters, suggesting widespread performance concerns that affect overall smoothness.

Appeals to farming sim fans: Many reviewers recommend this game to fans of farming sims, cultivation genres, and Stardew Valley-like games, emphasizing its fresh setting and genre blend.

Good value on sale: Multiple reviews state the game is worth buying at its current sale price, often around $15-$17, with some recommending waiting for a deeper discount.

High enjoyment and recommendation: Many positive reviews describe the game as very worth playing, providing dozens of hours of enjoyable content, and strongly recommend it.

Not recommended overall: Some reviewers explicitly state they do not recommend the game, citing a desire to quit or refund, and suggesting it lacks appeal.

Not recommended at full price: Several negative reviews advise against purchasing at full price, suggesting waiting for a sale of 60% off or a price of $10 or less.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $15.00.

Game completion: 60.0h.

Story completion: 50.0h.

Immortal Life delivers immediate fun through magical watering and cooking, but the mid-to-late game becomes tedious and grindy, causing a drop in enjoyment.

Friction: Grindy progression with excessive material requirements; Tedious inventory management and item sorting; Repetitive combat with limited attack options; Mandatory multi-day waiting periods for story advancement; Unclear mid-game objectives and guidance; Bland and empty dungeon environments.

Unlock drivers: Magic watering that covers multiple crops at once; Recipe automation after mastery reducing repetitive cooking; Large irrigation systems to reduce daily plant upkeep; Progression unlocks for furniture, seeds, and new mechanics.

Farming Sim Enthusiast: Focuses on crop growing, cooking, collecting materials, and slowly advancing through story quests at a leisurely pace, often ignoring or tolerating combat and heavy grind. Motivation: Relaxing farming, crafting, and progression within a Chinese cultivation setting. Stance: buy.

Cultivation Genre Fan: Balances farming with dungeon combat and breakthrough rituals, focusing on character growth and sect revival. May engage deeply with combat and cultivation mechanics, overlooking some jank. Motivation: Experiencing a cultivation story and progression system in a farming sim context. Stance: sale.

Completionist Grinder: Methodical and tickbox-oriented, heavily focused on optimizing resource gathering, crafting, and inventory management to overcome grind. Often uses guides and efficient routes. Motivation: Completing all collections, achievements, and maximal progression despite the grind. Stance: deep sale.

Steam Deck: The game suffers from critical save failure on Steam Deck, preventing progress retention. Additionally, controller support is inconsistent with inverted and unresponsive inputs, and the game experiences frequent crashes triggered by specific actions. While performance is smooth, these issues make the game highly frustrating and require workarounds like Proton GE. The overall Steam Deck experience is broken due to loss of progress and instability.

Linux and Proton: The game runs smoothly on Steam Deck / Linux with Proton, but a critical save failure bug prevents normal gameplay. Users consistently report that saves silently fail, forcing complete restarts. A workaround exists using Proton GE Orc version, but it is not well-known and may not be fully reliable. The issue makes the game barely playable for Linux users.

External guides: The predominant user complaint is the lack of in‑game guidance for quest progression and system understanding, forcing players to consult external guides. Additionally, the existing external resources are often outdated or unreliable, further harming the experience.