Charlie.
The agronomist and land agent, and the only character whose entire function is to tell you that you cannot do the thing you were about to do. He also runs the most reliable income in the game, which is not a coincidence.
- Runs
- The scheme-income mini-game
- Scheme income
- ≈30% of a well-played farm’s total
- Deadlines
- Four a year, hard
The mechanic, in full.
Agri-environment income is now roughly thirty per cent of average English farm business income, and it arrives whatever the weather does. A farming game that leaves it out is not a farming game; it is a harvest game with a tractor in it.
So Charlie runs a second loop alongside the agronomy. You choose scheme options — buffer strips, overwintered stubble, flower-rich margins, hedgerow management — against a budget of hectares you could otherwise crop. Each option pays a stated rate, each one costs cropping area, and the arithmetic of whether to take it is the most genuinely educational thing in the design.
The deadlines are hard, and this is the one place the game is unforgiving about time. Miss the application window and the option waits a year. That is not a punishment mechanic; it is how the real scheme works, and softening it would teach the wrong thing to the one audience most likely to be affected by it.
The numbers.
Charlie, specified
- Runs
- The scheme-income mini-game
- Scheme income
- ≈30% of a well-played farm’s total
- Deadlines
- Four a year, hard
- Says no
- Constantly, and correctly
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
The scheme-income mini-game
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.
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…
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…
Charlie, 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.
First sight of every drop
The things that sell out do it in minutes. This is the only warning anyone gets.
