Gerald.
The boundaries. Dry-stone walls by the metre, hedgerows laid rather than flailed, and a biodiversity score that is the only number in the game that cannot be bought, hurried or converted into anything else.
- Builds
- Wall and hedge, by the metre
- Wall rate
- 4–6 metres a day
- Nature units
- Earned only, never purchasable
The mechanic, in full.
Boundaries are the part of a farm that most games render as scenery. Here they are a system. A metre of dry-stone wall takes materials, takes Gerald’s time, and lasts a century. A hedge laid properly in January produces a stock-proof boundary, blackberries, nesting habitat and scheme income; the same hedge flailed produces a tidy line and very little else.
The output is nature units, and they are the one currency in the game with no exchange rate. They cannot be bought with money, cannot be bought with Coins, cannot be traded to another player and cannot be converted into anything. They accumulate slowly, they feed the parish goals, and they are the only score that rewards patience rather than throughput.
Gerald is also the character the design treats most carefully. He is a real man who was treated for prostate cancer on camera and raised more than twenty-five thousand pounds for Prostate Cancer UK doing it. Nothing in this design makes a joke of him, and the running gag about subtitles does not appear anywhere in it.
The numbers.
Gerald, specified
- Builds
- Wall and hedge, by the metre
- Wall rate
- 4–6 metres a day
- Nature units
- Earned only, never purchasable
- Feeds
- Parish goals
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
Hedgerows, walls and nature units
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…
Charlie
The agronomist and land agent, and the only character whose entire function is to tell you that you cannot do …
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…
Gerald, 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.
Get told before everyone else
One email a fortnight about what is actually happening in the fields, the brewery and the pub — including the bits that went wrong.
