Kaleb.
Pay Kaleb and the job that was going to take four hours takes none. He is the game’s only time-skip, he is the main sink for the premium currency, and he will not sell you an outcome you could not have reached by waiting.
- Sells
- Time, and only time
- Never sells
- Yield, luck or a better outcome
- Refuses
- About one job in five
The mechanic, in full.
Every free-to-play farming game monetises waiting. Almost all of them monetise it badly, by selling an outcome as well as the wait — the paid tractor that also yields more, the paid fertiliser that also works better. That is where a simulation stops teaching anything, because the sim stops being a sim.
Kaleb sells the clock and nothing else. A field skipped forward produces exactly the yield it would have produced had you come back in four hours, calculated from the same inputs, with the same working shown. The receipt says so. If a skipped field ever out-yielded a waited one the mechanic would be a lie, and the whole design falls over on the first spreadsheet somebody posts to a forum.
He also refuses. About one job in five he will not do, because the job is one the game wants you to watch — the first drilling, the flag leaf decision, the combine going in. A time-skip that can skip the good bit is a time-skip that empties the game.
The numbers.
Kaleb, specified
- Sells
- Time, and only time
- Never sells
- Yield, luck or a better outcome
- Refuses
- About one job in five
- Daily cap
- Six skips, then he goes home
The rules that apply to every character
- Can this system be bought outright?
- NoNothing in the design converts money into a better outcome. Money buys time and cosmetics.
- Can it punish an absent player?
- NoRelief cover covers up to 21 days, free, and nothing decays behind it.
- Is the person licensed?
- NoThis is an unsolicited design document. No agreement exists with anybody named on it.
Role in the game
Time-acceleration
Where it sits in the loop
Named on the loop page, stage by stage.
Purchasable?
No part of this system is for sale.
On the estate
A real person, described here without permission.
The other five.
Charlie
The agronomist and land agent, and the only character whose entire function is to tell you that you cannot do …
Gerald
The boundaries. Dry-stone walls by the metre, hedgerows laid rather than flailed, and a biodiversity score tha…
Lisa
The farm shop, and the multiplier that makes the whole economy work. Raw produce sold at the gate is worth one…
Alan
The builder. Everything built in the game goes through Alan, every quote he gives is honest, and every final i…
Harriet
Set relief cover before you close the game and the farm carries on without you. Stock is fed, windows that mus…
Kaleb, questioned.
It is a mechanic named after what they visibly do on screen, compressed into something a game can model. It is not a portrait and it is not endorsed by them.
No. The only things money buys anywhere in this design are Kaleb’s time-skips and cosmetics, and neither of those changes an outcome.
The whole loop this sits inside.
Six stages, and the third one is the interesting one.
Pestering, at your invitation
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