Reviews

• 

  NullaPax

  Dec 24, 2022

  Well I'm a hundred hours in so I'd better say something I suppose. There is a lot wrong with this game as others have pointed out. Personally it has never crashed on me so that's nice :) It truly is Banished in close-up. It is slow and you need to do quite a bit of micro-management so avoid it if you just like to give orders and sit back. You ARE going to have to possess your villagers and do the work yourself at some point. I'm going for a thumbs up as I feel it caters to a player-base that lacks many games like this.
• 

  Sam

  Dec 25, 2022

  just started the tutorial and i crashed the game twice, i thought okay this was just a tutorial and i just started playing the real game, after a while the game crashed again, i'm actually okay with the game crashing sometimes, as long as i don't lose too much progress, the problem is that you can't set the autosave interval and i dont know how long it takes the game to autosave, there aren't many settings in the game which makes the game feel less free. the strange thing in the game is that a 6 year old child is a teenager and has an adult body and can kill a bear, the creepy thing in the game is that a 9 year old girl is already pregnant *smh. The AI is also so stupid, they can starve to death if there is no food in their house or at your barn even though there is food in various places, like in the fisherman's logde, if you don't assign people to this job then no one will deliver or pick up the fish there at that place. and there are many other small bugs. The last update I saw was 2020, and it looks like the devs haven't cared too much about the game. the game is actually very calm and relaxing but still, just buy it on sale
• 

  Evelyn

  Aug 27, 2016

  So far I have nothing but positive things to say about this. Lots of people will say it is a Banished copy, and in a way it is. Except with tons of extra features in it and a clearly obvious graphical improvement. Pros: -Easy to get the hang of -User friendly interface and easy access information -Lots of variety for buildings -Terrain editing is simple and straightforward allowing for wide customization -First person view allows you to control, play, and act as one of your villagers including doing their jobs and tasks -Buildings are more than just a shell, having full interiors (rooms/stairs/etc) -Houses give bonuses aside from just shelter and give more perks the higher "tier" a house is -Houses can be upgraded instead of demolished to make room -Game runs very smoothly with little to no graphical glitches/lag -Map preview when generating a new world -Weather features feel very realistic -Music is fantastic, whoever that singer is, deserves a medal! -Storage fills up visually with items you place inside (No mystery boxes of goods) *I could keep going Cons: -**Edit** First hotfix fixed the issue with crashing for me. -**Edit** Lack of sound effects has been fixed. -Would like to see some multiplayer or more in game combat actions -**Edit** They did add more music so things aren't as repetitive, sounds nice! Overall, so far I'm having a blast playing this game. If I had to go off a straight choice of either Banished or Forest Village, I'd pick this game straight off as it has way more features, looks better, sounds better, and plays better. The extra depth that the 1st person adds, is a nice unique feature that I think a lot of similar games could benefit from and the game still looks GREAT in 1st person rather than choppy crap like a lot of other games do close up. I have been really excited to play this game, and am happy that the devs delivered. Both involved companies have decent reputations and I look forward to future updates. Thanks! 10/10 for an early access and 9/10 if it was full release! *30+ hours now* Everything above still holds imo. They have changed terraforming to x5 speed and I'm loving it. After the area was cleared, I managed to level a mountain using one character, MUCH better. I didn't feel there was an issue before but then again maybe I did too much terraforming in LiF:YO *smirk*. Don't forget to take advantage of 1st person PoV if for no other reason than to buff your nearby villagers with a nice speed buff! *400+ hours, over 4 years later* I am still coming back to play this game. I have probably spent more hours in this city builder than any others that I've played. I still love the game! I'm very happy with the modding community here as well, some great extra content for people that are looking for it. This has become the standard for me to compare other games to. Probably the best $30 I've ever spent on a game since I've gotten so much time out of it. Thank you devs, for me your hard work definitely paid off!
• 

  PsykoKitty

  Aug 31, 2016

  My first ever review, so be kind :D This game is everything Banished should have been. And before anyone complains, i am a huge fan of Banished, i just think that this game is a step up from Banished. The graphics are beautiful. Buildings, people, wildlife, livestock all look great, very detailed. The game is easy to learn, but for complete beginners i think the tutorial needs a bit of work. I haven't come across any bugs or crashes yet, i've only been playing for 3 hours. The fact you can possess the body of a villager and take full control of them is great! You see through their eyes in first person view. You can take supplies to the warehouse, or kill a wolf that's eating your chickens!! Or just take a walk around the village you created. I like the fact that the weather has a huge impact on what crops you can grow, and how they grow. How the weather affects your villagers and their performance when doing their jobs. The fact that even when you make clothing for your villagers they actually change their clothing, so it alters the look of them. The game makes the micromanagement of your villagers important. How your villagers feel and act has an impact on your entire village and it's productivity. My only negative so far is the fact i can't use edge scrolling with the mouse. I hate using keys to move left or right in game. And the camera control needs calming down a little as it's super fast. But these are minor things that can be fixed as the game progresses. The fact is, this is a Banished style game with everything Banished didn't include. It's fully working in Early Access, and it looks stunning. Well worth getting if you like Banished, or if you're looking for a new city builder type game that isn't too easy or so simple it's built and finished in 5 minutes. For anyone worrying about specs, here's mine, and the game runs perfectly :) Win 7 64-bit. 8Gb memory. Intel Core CPU i7-4700MQ @ 2.40GHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M (i also have second card Intel HD Graphics 4600 that i ran it on by mistake and it worked fine with that too). Thanks for reading, hope you found this review helpful :) *EDIT (Aug, 31st) - Mouse edge scrolling has now been enabled in the game. And camera rotation is smooth and steady. Thanks devs! I'm very happy :P
• 

  Spacemania

  Dec 6, 2016

  Well this game is truly without mercy First off, I do want to start with that I certainly recomend this game for economy/strategy type players looking for a serious challenge. For those who are familiar with Banished, this game takes it into a new level of visual effects, improved terrain with terraforming tools, and more reasonable resourse elements. Honestly the game could have been called Banished 2 and it would make logic to me. I also imagine many others have felt similar connections between the two games (at least it looks like they were made by seperate companies). In any case, as I said the game is without mercy. You make one mistake big enough, you won't notice until 6-12 months game time has passed and unless your lucky or are somehow prepared, your village will go into colony colapse and your best bet is just to start all over again. Didn't manage to gather enough food for winter AND spring? Colony Collapse due to starvation. Forgot to harvest enough lumber for your woodchoppers, or fail to hire enough to produce it? Colony Collapse due to frostbite Didn't build enough storage for your supplies and now you couldn't collect enough for the year? Collony Collapse due to stupidity Failed to produce clothing and tools fast enough for your colony before they begin to act like cavemen? Collony Collapse due to starvation/frostbite/stupidity via means of inefficency. Did poor city planning from the start? Guess what! Colony collapse by means of your civilians having to marathon al day to deliver one basket of wheat. Did everything right but OH LOOK AT THAT FIRE! Gues what? Colony collapse because your town caught on fire, your citizens didn't harvest enough food, all because the building that got lit up was exactly the structure farthest away from any given supply of water! Okay now you got food, clothing, fuel, tools, strong fire protection, and everything is running along al- OH WAIT LOOK A THAT YOU FORGOT TO BUILD ENOUGH HOUSING - COLLONY COLLAPSE BECAUSE YOUR POPULATION AGED OUT. Ugh, fine. Food, clothing, blah blah blah all set and goo- OH NO WAIT SOMEONE DIED AWAY FROM A PYRE AND YOUR CIVILIANS GOT THE PLAUGE AND YOU HAVE NO HEALERS- COLLONY COLLAPSE COLONY COLLAPSE COLONY COLLAPSE COLONY COLLAPSE ... All in all a good game.
• 

  goblin.queen

  May 30, 2017

  I was hesitant to buy Early Access of this game, firstly, because of the number of reviewers who slammed it for being a blatant copy of 'Banished' and the numerous complaints about crashes, but, when I saw that the Devs had released a huge patch aimed at fixing playability, I just couldn't take it anymore. I was seeing superb graphics in the Playthough videos, and mentions of there being some military threat introduced eventually (something that I had always felt Banished lacked...once you'd built everything, there was no reason to protect anything), so I forked out for the hefty price tag. I have not been disappointed by my experience thus far. While it runs on a very similar engine and UI to Banished, even at this early juncture I am already noticing some key differences to its predecessor. I also happily note today that the Workshop has now also been made available, and that the first externally developed mods are making their way on there. Definitely a very positive step toward added content, which is always a winner for me. I am head-over-heels in love with the graphics: superbly realistic and richly designed historical clothing, buildings, environment and water. It truly delivers full immersion into another place and time, and being a veteran of city building games down the (many, many) years I have been playing them, I am very excited about this game looking like it is shaping up to be 'the one'...that medieval city building game I have been waiting for. The one that delivers the true grit that feudal life was all about: the harshness of survival being key, whether the threat came from starvation, illness or attack. Unlike Banished (which I clocked up a serious amount of play time on and I still love, don't get me wrong), I am anticipating getting to the end result of having built a full settlement and then having the responsibility of defending it. Because, realistically, no place on earth exists in a vacuum, and there will always be threats to be overcome. And if historical authenticity can be injected into the fantastical realm of gameplay, then so much the better. I am after the full simulation experience here, so Devs: please leave no stone unturned in future development, and I promise that you will have a fan (or a peasant chicken farmer) for life. I'm not going to go on and on about everything to do with the game content so far, because it really is a wonderful discovery experience playing the game the first time, and 'unpacking' your new toys without spoilers. :} Rather, let me attend to key issues that any buyer will want to know. 1) Stability: So far, I have found it very reliable, and it only crashed once when I tried to zoom out to max view, in order to scope the further layout of my map to work out where I could expand into. I don't have a state-of-the-art computer and it has handled everything fine. I've had no other problems, and I expect this is down to the latest bug fix patch that has vastly improved stability. 2) Full immersion: yes, the game looks and feels seamless, very realistic, and while still somewhat short of content (only a matter of time to become well padded out), I have to point out that I am very impressed by the stick field fences (the fact that I don't have to build them one by painful one), the time it takes to walk from place to place, the fact that villagers need to return to their abodes to eat (rather than helping themselves at the granary), and the bleak and chilling feeling that midwinter was freezing cold with minimal visibility. And, that gatherers and fields will not work once winter sets in properly. It all works very well. 3) Content: Of course, it is still in Early Access, and there is miles to go yet before it is finished. It's a bit overly-priced for the more or less basic game and available content, but it does look like it is shaping up to be quite the masterpiece, if the roadmap on the Devs website is anything to go by. I do recommend you go over there and take a look...it should tell you everything I haven't. I wait in anticipation for the next update, and the arrival of the Vikings...they're still on their way apparently. Until then, I'm happily building, farming and protecting my livestock from the predators. :}
• 

  SirLogiC

  Jun 4, 2017

  Hard to recommend this game at the moment. It is so similar to Banished, and adds so little, with problems that are long fixed in Banished. Firstly this does have better graphics, and the first person mode is useful to use. Problems and Issues: 1) There is a woeful lack of decorations, placables, clutter objects, whatever you want to call them. No decorative trees, gardens, dock items like crates or nets, fountains. There is some walls, arches, signs and light posts, that's it. 2) There are no couples. People will move to the closest house to their job. This can mean houses full of only women or men or even only young children. Women seem to magically get pregnant, based on the house they live in. 3) The people are work units. They never get bored, which is good because there is literally only the tavern, which isn't that useful. No games or recreations or festivals or even idle chatter. OK these three problems mean the game has a massive lack of personality. You get food, have houses, make tools and clothes. Grats you are done. 4) Farming is based on temerature. This forces the gameplay around a winter mechanic that drops temperature to stop farming. Longer winters = less farming time. Crops don't have a planting season, they have a planting temperature. You can usually do 2 harvests in a field. Game seems balanced for this. Breaks immersion a bit and also means the game is impossible to have a hot climate option, since it would be year round farming = too easy. Hot climate have it's own challenges. Australian here, want winter planting and early summer harvesting :( 5) Map generator makes janky maps. Needs a loooot of work. All maps are island that centre is high ground. No lakes, no rivers, no plains. Unlike banished which had every food item be it's own item (gather collected mushrooms, onions, blueberries, etc, same for each field crop, etc, etc). This game simplifies those to fruit and vegetables. To be honest everything the devs seem to have done is to have the game be mechanically functioning while making it easy to code. Having each crop have it's own growing time and storage icon is a lot of work, having people live as couples in the same house, that's more work. I want more work. This game could be great, but it needs the hard work to make it great. Right now it's Banished with better graphics and less personality or gameplay.
• 

  Travitar

  Aug 14, 2017

  Was looking for a game similar to Banished and ran across this game. I spent 2 hours reading the good and bad reviews and decided to buy it and make my own decision. I'm not regretting my decision to buy it in the slightest. If my opinion ever changes I'll update this post. Update: Well... I've played this for a fair number of hours now. The game itself is fun but I'm very tempted to change this to a thumbs down. When re-loading a save, there are often differences (dissapearing roads, buildings moving a square or two, etc..) I also ran into my first save error on an automatic save. Ruined that game. I'm not quite ready to give it a thumbs down, but I am going to set the game aside till the next patch comes around. Update2: I can't stop playing it, bugs and all. I've been emailing support with the bugs I find and save files that reproduce them. Every time they've gotten back with me within a day and are clearly actively working to fix bugs. Going to keep this a thumbs up because of that.
• 

  Garp02

  Sep 17, 2017

  Life is Feudal: Forest Village is not a finished game. After 12 to 15 years in game a "Save file Error occurs" and you can proceed no further and save your progress. After a little investigation, it turns out that Mindillusion (the developers) have know about this Error for a substantial amout of time. Updates have happend but no fix for the "Save file Error". As you can imagine getting to year 12 to 15 takes longer than the 2 hour trial period that Steam offers. Zero refund! EDIT: After some reasearch it appears long individual gaming sessions appear to play a role in this "Save file Error". Some people who play shorter gaming sessions dont have this issue, and if you do get this error then logging out of the game and logging back in can casue the issue to disappear, and so you can play on. Good news, but for now im keeping my review a thumbs down.
• 

  figureoflife

  Oct 29, 2017

  The people are simply too stupid for this game to work. For the tenth time, I just had a village of 55 people drop like flies to starvation - after 49 years of civilization - with 500,000 calories in storage. Thousands of vegetables. Fish. Meat. Honey. Fruit. I had an active healer. The food was evenly dispersed between barns in a village small enough to walk across in less than a minute, including all paved roads for faster transport. I read the negative reviews and then read a review which argued for some in-game fixes that supposedly made it playable and I LOVE this kind of game. I love survival games (this is a city-builder but with some survival elements) and I love that I can eat my breakfast or do something else while making little adjustments. This, however, is a broken game. It is, quite frankly, inferior programming. Don't buy this. I have over 40 hours in and I did get some enjoyment out of it but I am done now, forever, and a little disappointed that my money went to support this. It needs to be fixed.
• 

  Synighte

  Nov 19, 2017

  To give context of this review I want to first eleborate on my gaming background in regards to this game and genre. I am a player that comes from similar games: Banished, City Skylines, Sim City 4, etc. Although I have marked this game as "not recommended" it is on the verge of becomming a recommendation (a 45 - 55 split). If a couple of major bugs, which exist in the game as of 11/16/2017 are fixed, as well as some quality of life fixes are made then I have no issue switching this review from not recommended to recommended. BUG ISSUES: - A save game corruption and error message which causes an inability to save. Closing the game and opening it again fixes the bug but it causes you to lose progress. - Some of the villagers have pathing issues. This is especially a problem with fish farms. Similar pathing problems occur on hills and mountains. Laborers are able to drop resources off at the building, then builders are unable to actually build the building. QUALITY OF LIFE ISSUES: -Families function differently that in banished. A villagers life goes from baby - child - teenager- adult. If a villager transfers from a baby to a child and there is no other house with an open spot available the child will immediately die. Family units do not exist in the same capacity as they do in Banished. In Forest Village every spot in a house functions as a valid spot for a villager, regardless of familial ties. In essence, whenever you plop down a small house it is basically a guarenteed increase of 5 babies within a year. This can cause those unfamiliar with this mechanic to place too many houses and cause a population boom which leads to starvation. -Even though you can rotate buildings, pathways are on a grid axis but villagers are not limited to this grid axis. If you want a diagonal pathway be prepared to slowly place one path length on the x axis then one on the y axis individually. villagers also will go from their normal freeform movement and will strictly follow the path causing them to look like they spazz out. Overall it is a beautiful game, I really want to enjoy it. I am hoping for several fixes to be made. In my mind this game as so close to perfect but then fell short. it needs a little bit of polish and I do not think that this game should have left pre-release stage just yet.
• 

  Salty. Space Pirate

  Dec 19, 2017

  Has the potential to be a bestseller. I have no idea if Devs read these reviews, but here goes. For the players: If you want chillaxed sim, resource managment, with nice graphics and a mod community then this is worth the investment. For the Devs: For you're work so far, thank you. Honestly, I can see the potential in this, there is place for this game in the market amongst the best. I've been searching for a game that I can creative and explore the progression of a sim village. My main enjoyment from games these days come from the genre of Survival, Build, OpenWorld. I understand the work thats went into the title so far, it cant be easy, especialy following in the footsteps in a previous failed game with the same genre that was well liked. but here is a few points I would like to see for my money in an EA game. [olist] [*] Dev involvment with the community. Creators thats give announcments often. If you want players to stick around, keep us updated. Goals, Next Patch, Bugs, End of EA and % of completion. [*] Gameplay: The game plays smooth, looks great, however its missing a few basics. such as: a Techtree, If you want to build a a Furnace for example, hover over the tap and a small description of what will be made. Longer Years, I mean, the game at x10 is the most effective way to actually play however, the game runs far to fast, a few days and you're into sumer, a few more nights and its winter. Add days'months to drag out the prep time for players stratagys. Work with the mod community and add the most effective mods, such as Improvments to Forrests. Before a mod, my villagers were killing the game, constantly chopping down new trees, gaining 2 wood. come winter. they all freeze. Now I'm able to increase the speed of how long they take too chop down trees and res from them. I have it set only a little high to what I feel should be the normal. The longer it takes to chop down, the more chance of trees being able to grow, and a better yeild means surviving the winter plus progressing. Camera: zoom further out function. and follow target. [*] For the future: Game style options. ie. Hostile Land - more defending village options. Map creation Function. A more detailed Trade system involving other Villages. [*] Please dont abandon the game , lower the price to welcome more players. the price should reflect the state of an EA game. Listen to the community and try to add the views into the games timeline. [/olist]
• 

  Kieffer

  Dec 29, 2017

  Needs work... This game just does not have the polished feel that Banished had. There are many improvements compared to Banished (1st person FOV, terraforming, cooking, castles, and more...), yet there are some serious issues in my opinion. It feels good to have an increased difficulty. One miscalculation in farmer allocation, or exapnding too quickly with certainly starve all or most of your colony. One problem I have however is the inability for the AI to store items efficiently. Banished did this with markets. Grocers could balance resources within all the warehouses in their radius. In Forest Village, this needs to be micromanaged to an incredibly frustrating level. Caravans are tedious to set up and are inefficient. This level of micromanaging is frustrating and the AI always seems to execute it poorly. Speaking of AI, herders should be able to defend thier livestock from animals, in addition to hunters. The fact that my chicken farmer sits there while a fox who slipped by my hunter goes on a killing spree is beyond frustrating. These are a few of my frustrations. It just seems to me that this game should still be in early access. It does not feel finished and I hope the developers continue to address these problems and others. Until then i cannot remommend this game over Banished despite the fact that this makes some notable improvements to it.
• 

  WebNinja

  Jan 18, 2018

  So, I'm going to start by saying I wish Steam had more than a "recommend" or "not recommend" rating system. While the game concept is great and the implementation is ok, it should of never left Early Access Alpha yet. After 100+ hours in this game, I was really torn if I should of selected recommended or not. I'll start by saying the game is fun. If you like these type of simulators, try it, you will more than likely be pleased with the types of buildings and options to build from. I really like the idea of going into First Person Mode and playing around. It’s a nice element to the game. I also like the easy ability for modifications. The game has some lacking features, like the ability to zoom out a decent amount. Now, I say the game should of never left alpha because of all the bugs. The first major one is saved games. I just lost about 4 years on a village because every autosave was corrupted on top of the 4 other times I randomly saved because I know saved games don’t save correctly. Please! Please! Fixed this! There should be nothing else on the list other than fixing the ability to save games….and yes, this is even without modifications. Next, the AI on these villagers….every time I upgrade a house I have villagers that are suddenly homeless even though I have plenty of room in another house. If the upgrade doesn’t finish in a timely fashion, these villagers end up starving to death because I guess they are too dumb to move into another house or walk to the barn with 40,000 pieces of food in it. Speaking of 40,000 pieces of food, there needs to be a way to stop production of an item. I have cows, lots of them, they produce meat, milk, and pelts. My villagers love the meat and use the pelts but suddenly I’m left with 39,000 milk when my cap on food is 40,000. At this point, just dumb the milk out so I can make room for other stuff….but nope, can’t get rid of it other than waiting for donkeys to move all that milk to the marketplace. I would love the ability to put a cap on specific things. Like, I want to max out milk at 4000 and meat at 4000 or something like that. You get the idea...I need more than a cap on food when one item can cap it out completely and there is no more room for fruits and meat which are needed for my pies… TL;DR: Sorry it’s so long. This has the potential to be a really great game. Just fix the saving bugs, the idiot villagers, and add in the ability for caps on specific items.
• 

  Sozzals

  Mar 26, 2018

  With over 200 hours on Banished, I've been looking for a similar game for a while now.  For me, finding a good city builder, is like finding a good book.  You can sink into it, forget about the outside world for a bit and just focus on keeping everything ticking over. I was a bit sceptical the first time I loaded up Life is Feudal: Forest Village.  I bought it in the Steam Winter sale in a grab of a few wishlist items.  On loading up the game, my first impressions weren't great.  I don't think I was in the mood for a city builder at the time and I thought it was an exact Banished clone.  Played it for about an hour and failed miserably, my first attempt ending after only the first year. There was a few months in between before I gave it another shot.  This time, being properly in the mood to immerse myself in a city builder. It's what you'd expect from a Banished style game, even down to almost exactly copying the interface.  You have orchards, farm fields, wood cutters, blacksmiths, tailors, etc.  You need to feed and clothe your villagers, ensure they have enough firewood for winter, enough tools so that they perform their tasks quicker, enough clothes so they don't freeze to death.  That's just the basic's of course.    The basics are pretty much the same as Banished.  But this game is harder, graphically much nicer and the mid-late game is made much more interesting by the introduction of technological research.  In order to advance and improve your village, you are required to build a Keep and use resources to unlock upgrades.  The trading system is also different to Banished and involves breeding and using donkeys to transport your goods. The game will allow you to take control of a villager, so you can go so far as micro killing irritating bears or helping with the harvest.  Having the ability to just idly wander around your village is a really nice touch and really add to the immersion. The seasons make everything in the game look vastly different.  Lush green grass in summertime and blizzards in winter.  The weather effects, although incredibly, can sometimes be irritating.  Sadly unlike Banished, there's no option to turn them off (yet). It looks like the developers are still working on this game, or at least releasing update patches for it.  There is also a workshop available for any budding modders.
• 

  Ned

  Apr 4, 2018

  I was dubious at first as it feels like a complete rip off of banished. I love banished, and didn't appreciate much difference other than the graphics and a few gimmics. I'v put in close to 100 hours now. This weekend I was using another PC, which was too low spec for this game, so played banished again. And the differences were really notable. Life is feudal: forest Village has more complexity to it, wider range of buildings, resources and content. Upgrades in the keep make it a little more interesting as you get into later game. I found I hadn't felt much for the enhanced grpahics, but going back to banished I really missed them. I'd recommend this game over banished now I have come to appreciate it. It's not perfect, but hopefully more development will iron out this kinks others have mentioned.
• 

  Bitch Please

  Jun 22, 2019

  The game is NICE and i would like to play it again BUT the updates have STOPPED so don't waste your money. Buy it for 2-3£/$ if you really want to. 18£ is a SCAM!
• 

  Haraldo

  Sep 14, 2019

  This was one of my favorite games of all time. As you'll see, I have a ton of hours on it. Unfortunately, they destroyed the lighting and ground textures in their last update a year ago, then abandoned the game when they began working on Life is Feudal MMO. The modding community has made the game much more playable but mods were limited to gameplay adjustments and decor additions. In short, its ugly now, but fun. I wouldn't purchase it unless it's on sale.
• 

  Erke

  Dec 18, 2019

  First of all, this game is abandoned by it's developers. Their last update to the game is on 4 Sep, 2018 (https://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=496460), the game's official site also stopped in 2018 (https://lifeisfeudal.com/News/?art=663) and their last official tweet is even before that on 20 Oct 2017 (https://twitter.com/f_v_game). If I had noticed these before, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. As for the comparisons between Banished and this one; yes they are exactly the same product as if they were released from same people. The interface is the same, the underlying code is the same, the gameplay and the mechanics are also the same. The only noticeable difference that Forest Village brings to the table is the first person interaction. While it is a nice addition there is not much to it. While FV comes with a bunch of Post-Processing graphical effects like bloom, depth of field, etc. Most of them causes crash to desktop too frequently that it can't be ignored. So even the in-game features can not be used properly. The workshop page has a lot of mods, but %90 percent of them are broken and not working. There's literally a handful of modders who look like they're trying to create a monoply over FV, for whatever reason, perhaps for donations or digital fame... And they list other modders as inactive and such... When you ask the community for potential mods wishes or new features, these people will come up and say "No, it's impossible!" %99.9 of the time. Due to either the game code as it is won't allow it, or it's beyond their capabilities or they just don't have the time for it... So to sum it up, this game has it's own good moments and the endeavor put into it can't be disregarded but the fact that it's lacking a lot features and full of bugs will keep disturbing you as you play through. I wouldn't be surprised if another title popped up with the exact same gameplay and a couple of new features, just to be abandoned again a year after from it's release... This seems like the new marketing strategy for the unknown indie companies; people will buy all those titles, potentially creating multiple incomes while not being able to expect or demand any updates or bugfixes... If you're kind of a person who are happy with incomplete, somewhat playable but broken game, go for it... But if otherwise, when you buy this game, you will occupy yourself 20-30 hours but after that, you will feel like you wasted your money.
• 

  elaurino

  Sep 30, 2020

  I have waited for years for this game to become reliable. Every time I play, the game crashes after about 20 game years. While the game is playable without the mods, it is not well-balanced and becomes very boring, very quickly. It's also quite dreary and difficult to navigate when it is raining or foggy. The wild animals drop like flies with one shot. Farmers get distracted from harvesting and perform other tasks. They also carry crops to storage as soon as they have a sack full instead of harvesting the entire field first. Usually, half the field gets wasted when frost kills it. Children instantly die if their house is being upgraded and there are no open places in other houses. Buildings can be accidentally placed half underground if building on a step. People run around in their underwear for days before going for clothing. The men look filthy. The avatar pics age, but the people don't... The mods fix many of these problems, but the game crashes inevitably. I've stuck with the main modder's work and always use his mod order list. I carefully followed all mod instructions. But it still crashes after only decade or two of gameplay. I've spent many hours, in addition to the 1,678 hours logged in game, just trying to figure out what causes the crashing. Problem being that, since it take many years of gameplay before the crash happens, it take hours of real time game playing before I can even know that there's still a problem with the mods activated. It's a beautiful game, and I would highly recommend it if the mods were assimilated and functional, but it's been years since I bought the game. The programmers have had a long time to fix the problems or balance the core game appropriately. I am so very disappointed and frustrated. I love this game, but I just can't recommend it in any good faith. Please fix this game. It is my favorite on Steam and it could be the favorite of so many people.