Life is Feudal: Your Own
Life is Feudal: Your Own
Game
Game2017
Life is Feudal: Forest Village
Developer Mindillusion
LiF:Forest Village is a city builder with survival aspects in a realistic harsh medieval world. Shape, build and expand your settlement, grow various food to prevent your villagers from avitaminosis and starvation. Possess them for additional micromanagement or simply to wander around. From the Steam store page
183 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Oct 19, 2026 · last updated Oct 30, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
61
Fresh
103 positive · 67 negative
95% range 53–68%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 103 | 67 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 6 | 1 | 3 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 3 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
1,513 of 2,419 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
61% recommend · 106 yes, 67 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 173 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mixed (4,007 of 6,035 positive).
Players praise the game's relaxing atmosphere and engaging city-building mechanics. [1][2][3] Many reviewers criticize the game as abandoned and unfinished, with persistent bugs. [4][5][6] Some players find the game rewarding despite its flaws, citing its depth and charm. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [4]
Do NOT buy this game. It is severely unfinished abandonware. The devs made a start on it, then just upped and left years ago. But for some reason its still for sale on here.
- [12]
Don't get me wrong, i don't think this game is very difficult. It would be nice, relaxing after-work escape from reality, however, crappy AI and user interface make it frustrating instead. Few examples: 1. Folks going for suicidal mission in -20C to the furthest tree in forester hut range to cut one tree while they have 20 other trees close to their warm homes that are also in range. 2. Kids dying in their warm …
- [7]
Let's be clear: this game is chess, not paintball. It requires patience and careful planning. If you push too hard, you die. With that understanding, it's a really good game, well designed, well balanced, no funky random research tree. If you have a collection of resource and people management games, this is a good one to have.
- [8]
This is a pretty surface level game and most likely you'll never see the later game content since it's quite slow paced but I'm weirdly obsessed with it. It's pretty clunky in several ways but it never really bothered me, in fact I think that clunkiness is part of the charm for me. I've played countless hours of this game when I wanted to just zone out despite it being long abandoned. If you like complex strategy …
- [1]
---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ …
Summarised from 34 of the 185 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 11, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
61% of the 173 Steam reviewers we collected recommend Life is Feudal: Forest Village. The complaint that keeps coming up: game is abandoned and unfinished. Deal-breaker or nitpick?
Reactions
60 of 183 · most liked firstDo NOT buy this game. It is severely unfinished abandonware. The devs made a start on it, then just upped and left years ago. But for some reason its still for sale on here.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This review is very late to the game. I was scrolling through my games and decided to put this out there on a whim for anyone who may still be considering this game. I bought Early Access hoping to support a spiritual successor to Banished. For a while development was good and it was making slow and steady progress. Eventually there was a shift and features and mechanics were being pumped out with a fair bit of jank to them. Then a very sudden 1.0 release, followed by one or two updates for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Don't get me wrong, i don't think this game is very difficult. It would be nice, relaxing after-work escape from reality, however, crappy AI and user interface make it frustrating instead. Few examples: 1. Folks going for suicidal mission in -20C to the furthest tree in forester hut range to cut one tree while they have 20 other trees close to their warm homes that are also in range. 2. Kids dying in their warm houses with plenty of food as they "were not able to move" whatever it means. 3.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Promising game, but abandoned. It hasn't seen an update since 2020. Don't waste your money on a project that the devs have given up on
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game was a promising sequel to Banished, but it's getting worse and worse, AI is getting worse, people randomly become homeless (even if there is enough housing and they weren't homeless a minute ago), people randomly start starving to death, UI is not improving. Recently it even started lagging and stuttering immensely on top notch setups.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love this game put many hours into it, but it is unfinished plenty of bugs. It is a shame because it is a take on the colony sim genre that had excellent potential. If you like to periodically select a random villager and control it first person to do a task you can do it. This game was abandoned and will not be picked back up again so if you really want to see the potential of the game you can buy it, but understand that there are plenty of bugs. If you want a game similar to this Banished…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Abandon Ware just like all of the Life Is Feudal games. 2 amazing concepts to fund one horrible mmo. I come today to remeber how good it could have been but never was. I still stand on if they ran with Your Own and provided updates closer to Rusts content schedule, that game would have been and still today would be crazy popular. if they ever go back to that, with less skill grind and role caps then im down, But i already know thats not happeneing. this game was bad, go play banished.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Let's be clear: this game is chess, not paintball. It requires patience and careful planning. If you push too hard, you die. With that understanding, it's a really good game, well designed, well balanced, no funky random research tree. If you have a collection of resource and people management games, this is a good one to have.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is okay but is very frustrating in some aspects and it looks like the game is abandoned. - Cannot turn off weather or nighttime so a substantial portion of the time you can't see anything. You just fast forward through about half the seasons and hope that nothing bad happens while you can't see anything. - Terraforming tool is very frustrating and clunky. - Farmers, gatherers and apiary should know when to harvest automatically before freezing temperatures come. There's no possible…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →More abandonware from Abandonbitbox Ltd. Dont get scammed by buying any of their sh!t
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A slow paced game that is really relaxing to play, however there are many things that still need to be fixed. The game crashes a lot, like a lot. Especially in late game or when trying to terraform. Another thing is how the weather effects decrease the visibility in the game or how it can get boring later on, after the first critical stages/years are over. I personally enjoyed playing it a lot, just building my village up and thinking of new things to add, grinding achievements and all that.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Having played Banished too, I can say that Life is Feudal: Forest Village feels like a different kind of experience. Sure, it has some things in common — you still manage a village, gather resources, and try to keep everyone alive — but it also does a bunch of things Banished never did. For one, you can actually switch to first-person and run around, hunt bears and wolves… something I definitely don’t remember doing in Banished (were there even wolves in that game?). Walking through the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Heavily don't recommend this game. After playing this game for just 2 hours you can tell its an unfinished / unpolished pile of garbage that is missing the most basic features. For instance if you select to deconstruct a building, there is no option to cancel the deconstruction process even though your villager haven't even started it yet. Accidentally click deconstruct on your starting warehouse? Well game over your villagers can no longer build anything because they refuse to collect and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →game is dead. last update july 2020
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →unfinished game, to bad.... it had a lot of potential, developer u suck dude....
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is just abandonware.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a real shame they stopped developing such an amazing game
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game could be good .... but when you're into a 20h game, and each time it crash 2 minutes after you load your last saved game .... that's not good at all
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Beautiful design with decent features, but greatly unfinished, no real goals. No events. Buggy as heck. Devs abandoned what could have been a masterpiece and possibly their most profitable and successful game ever.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So this game is screwed up. So glad I bought it(NOT!!!) Everyone is starving to death with plenty of food available. This is a serious glitch. Forget the lazy developers. This is obviously just a quick game to fund their other game. But it plays horribly and gives zero reason to play on. I'm done with this game. As they obviously gave up on it themselves.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is not easy to survive in medieval times, and I have come to expect years of starvation from poor management of resources. Sometimes a poor decision that leads to planting too little in the spring will have half your village starving before the second harvest comes in! Maps can be huge which means massive time investment in taking care of the little ant-hills.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Amazing game. So addictive. I've bought so many crummy games on steam, and I know it's hard to chose, especially from the reviews, but this game was way better than I ever expected. The resource management and everything is balanced so well. I love Banished, but I would say this game is actually better. It is similar to Banished because of the management, etc., but it also has a tech tree to improve your workers, and a logistics system using donkeys which actually adds another level to the game…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Played , alot like banished , I like banished more though it seems more well polished. I would not recommend overall, get banished instead.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is severely unpolished. Honestly its sad because to even make the game semi playable you'll have to use mods. Then even with mods you run into issues like lack of citizens knowing how to gather resources even when you set limits. Its sad how poorly they did with this, yet did so good with life is feudal. However than again the failing MMO speaks for itself.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Do not waste your money. This is Abandonware left with many bugs.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a pretty surface level game and most likely you'll never see the later game content since it's quite slow paced but I'm weirdly obsessed with it. It's pretty clunky in several ways but it never really bothered me, in fact I think that clunkiness is part of the charm for me. I've played countless hours of this game when I wanted to just zone out despite it being long abandoned. If you like complex strategy games it's almost definitely not for you but if you prefer something more simple…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is very very bad optimized, even with my 4080 GPU with everything at minimum it works pretty bad, specially when terraforming. Plus has too many bugs and doesnt feel polished. Looks like a Banished clone, and feels repetitive. Way toooo expensive for what it is.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →For the person claiming it has things that Banished doesn't, like hunting bears/wolves. Don't think that's a good review, you get near these animals and click. It's over. They don't fight back, don't run, die to 1 click. This person is unimaginably easy to amuse. Villagers frequently starve despite having a home with food in it, some females refuse to get pregnant even with the best houses that claim to increase chance and have a variety of food. A few features were never finished and the game…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've been playing Life is Feudal: Forest Village for around five years now, and it’s easily one of my favorite top-down simulation games. If you're into city builders with a slower, more thoughtful pace, this one’s a gem. The game offers a relaxing yet engaging experience. You start with a small group of villagers and gradually build up a thriving medieval settlement. What I love most is the balance between micromanagement and letting things flow — you can dive deep into resource planning,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's an older game. has some lag issues, but still fun to play.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Played it in 2026 again. Still damn good as heck, with or without mods
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Too much micromanagement.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I cant even get through the tutorial...it crashes every single time. I tried for 30 minutes. Lowered the setting completely even though my specs are above and beyond for this game. Please make it playable QQ
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's crashing so frequently. I don't think this game is supported anymore. I bought this cause I played banished like 10 years ago and it was fun (although had similar issues, not just as big). Can't recommend it at it's current state.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Do not buy this game, buy Banished instead for 20$. I played Banished for awhile before i saw this game. I thought i would enjoy it because it looked like a updated Banished. I spent the 25$ to find out it didnt work how you would expect. The people would take the long way to a task causing them to become hungry and go back to eat, just to die of starvation after they grabbed food.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Solid city builder that has been review bombed for no apparent reason. Main menu UI and loading the right resolution could do with some fixing but a good game overall.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I recommend this game, it is very good. Some people are comparing this game to Banished, but these are different games in the contexts these are often compared. The player has to follow different strategies in these two games due to the way AI works in each of these games, and this is why many of those comparisons are futile. However these games are the same genre, and most definitely comparable the following way: This one is actualy harder, looks better, and more rich to buildables. Banisheds…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →just get banished
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have never gotten past the tutorial. It crashes every time. Recently purchased a new computer and it crashes also.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →LAGGY! broken achivements, not optimized at all. Intresting concept like game but its frustraiting to play..
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →at some point you will lose your save file, always
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is fun for a couple hours or so, but then it falls of drastically. After I get to 300-350 villagers, everyone just starts dying of starvation, and I mean everyone. Despite having thousands upon thousands of units of food spread out across several barns, plus all of the houses stocked with food and roads in between - everyone dies. It not just one or two here or there, it's dozens at a time. I can't figure out what's going on. No matter how I set up my village, everyone dies. So then…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is so poorly optimized, that building a village with only 300 inhabitants becomes a slide show. It also lacks essential quality of life features, such as disabling fog or increasing brightness, in order to see the village under all weather conditions. Basic features such as cancelling demolitions or upgrades are missing, but can be enabled by using certain mods. There are many bugs in the terraforming and building system, for which one has to fiddle with workarounds a lot.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wish this game had updates, but it's a solid game as it is.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a nice town building game. It is very hard at the beggining but you get the ropes eventually. I just hoped there was a function to say "hey you dumb f*ks, collect this 100 million pieces of wood you guys left here on the ground after i told you to cut down some trees". Besides that, the game is nice, mods help A LOT with how you want to make the game to play out too.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Relaxing, village building game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's exactly the same as Banished but with a few extra features.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a fantastic city builder that's very relaxing, thanks to its soothing music. One of my favorite features is the ability to pause the game but still observe things in an emergency, which helps with managing crises. Additionally, the option to speed up the game to 10x is great for when you want things to move faster, but be careful—at higher speeds, people work quicker, but they also get sick and die faster. There are a few helpful mods available that address some small annoyances,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is complicated but not too much. It is fun learning the game and not dying lol.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a city builder. It's very relaxing especially because of the music. The fact that you can pause the game but still see things in an emergency is really nice. And the fact that you can speed everything up to 10x is also really nice. Just remember that at higher speeds, people work faster, but they also get sick and die faster. There are a few mods that are really helpful to fix some small annoying things but otherwise. The game is really fun.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Missing lots of information / QoL. Could have been a very good game with more polish. Not for me.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I don't think anyone should buy this game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A city builder based on an isolated community of only a few on a remote island. Has a well defined and interacting balance between housing population and food as you dance around the problems of manpower, tools, clothing and other rudimentary requirements for avoiding the reaper (plagues, fire, raids, rabies, famine, exposure etc).
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Needs work. Resolution issues, Interface display has borders but some displayed info is off screen edge, Adjusted in game settings and user interface scaling to no avail. This game also changes your desktops native Res, I had my icons nice and organized now they are thrown all over from the game attempting to toy with my desktop Res instead of scaling itself down. NEXT!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →too much bugs, freezes like 6/10 time playing. Game lay is good but developers need to gie the game some TLC
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a very fun medieval city building game. Sadly, the developers abandoned it, so in many ways it doesn't feel fully finished and balanced, but the modding community can make up for a lot of it and is really great too. I can play it over and over again and it never gets boring for me.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →While I do really enjoy this game, and I do recommend it. I will say that you NEED to save the game every season change. The game is still filled with crashes, even if you are not using the speed increase. I recommend saving at the very least every half year mark and restarting the game to prevent you losing a lot of save data.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This actually happened to a buddy of mine in a game called Life is Feudal. He killed so many people his karma went negative and came back around to 2.4 billion. He had such a high level of Karma he instantly became the server's Pope. The reign of The Red Pope lasted far longer than anyone wanted.
positive · AI labelView post →I will keep playing this game for a loong time, specially thanks to the modders. Is relaxing, and reminds me of older games.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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