Six people, six systems.
Nobody here is a portrait or a quest-giver. Each of the six is a mechanic with a name on it, and the mechanic is the one that person actually does — Kaleb sells time, Charlie sells compliance, Gerald builds boundaries, Lisa adds value, Alan runs over budget and Harriet keeps the farm alive while you are not there.
The six.
Each of them is a system. None of them is a dialogue tree.
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 p…
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 a…
Gerald
The boundaries. Dry-stone walls by the metre, hedgerows laid rather than flailed, and a biodiversity score that is the only number…
Lisa
The farm shop, and the multiplier that makes the whole economy work. Raw produce sold at the gate is worth one thing. The same pro…
Alan
The builder. Everything built in the game goes through Alan, every quote he gives is honest, and every final invoice is between no…
Harriet
Set relief cover before you close the game and the farm carries on without you. Stock is fed, windows that must be hit are hit, an…
What each one actually is, mechanically.
| Character | The system | What it costs the player | What it can never do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaleb | Time-acceleration | Premium currency, capped at six skips a day | Change an outcome, or skip the drilling, the flag leaf or the combine |
| Charlie | The scheme-income mini-game | Cropping hectares, and four hard deadlines a year | Be bought, hurried, or skipped for money |
| Gerald | Boundaries and nature units | Time, materials and patience | Produce anything convertible into currency |
| Lisa | Retail value-add | Shop capacity, and the sourcing radius | Exceed the multiplier, or sell what did not come from the ground |
| Alan | Construction, and the overrun | 0–35 per cent above the quote | Abandon a build, exceed the cap, or be avoided by paying |
| Harriet | Relief cover while you are away | Nothing. It is free at every tier | Ever become a paid feature |
Why these six, and why nobody else.
Because these are the six functions a small mixed farm actually needs, and because each of them maps onto a mechanic that is missing from every other game in the category. Time, compliance, boundaries, value-add, construction and cover. Take any one of them out and the loop has a hole in it.
It also solves the character problem that farming games generally solve badly. The genre default is a cast of quest-givers who exist to hand out tasks and thank you for completing them. Nobody remembers them, because they are a menu with a face on.
A character who is a system is remembered, because you have opinions about them. Everybody who plays this ends up with a view on Alan.
Nothing here is licensed, and no likeness rights exist
These are real people. This document has no agreement with any of them, has approached none of them, and describes systems named after them purely to make a design argument legible. Any real version of this would need individual likeness agreements before a single line of it was written, and those agreements would properly determine what each character could be made to say and do.
The six, in one line each.
Kaleb
Sells the clock, never the outcome.
Charlie
Says no, and runs the reliable money.
Gerald
Boundaries, and the one score that cannot be bought.
Lisa
Three to eight times, and a sourcing radius.
Alan
Fourteen per cent over, on average.
Harriet
Free, and never anything else.
The characters, questioned.
Because the alternative is charging people for not being punished, which is the mechanic that has made most of this category unpleasant. Relief cover is the anti-pattern the whole design is organised around.
About one job in five, and always the same three: the first drilling, the flag leaf decision and the combine going in. A time-skip that can skip the good bit empties the game.
None of it. This is an unsolicited third-party design document written by nobody with any standing, and a real version would need individual agreements with every person named here before anything was built.
Start with the one who sells time.
The premium currency sink, and the rule that keeps it honest.
