Farming / Life Sim

What it is. A calendar and a plot of land. You plant, water, wait, harvest, sell, and reinvest across seasons — a routine of small chores whose payoff arrives on a schedule you can read. Optional threads (relationships, foraging, upgrades) braid around the core crop loop.

Player fantasy / why it’s fun. “I made a plan on Monday and by harvest it came true.” The pull is gentle solvency: no fail-screen looming, just plans that resolve. Calm isn’t the absence of goals — it’s goals that are reachable, a to-do list that closes itself one satisfying day at a time.

Pillars

Plans that can come true. The calendar is a hard inequality, not a vibe: season length ≥ longest growDays + harvest slack. Every crop the game sells must fit the season it’s sold in.
The player knows what the bot knew. Surface the critical numbers — nights left in the season, days to ripen — on screen. Knowledge the diligent bot needs to win is knowledge the player needs to plan.
One predicate sets the whole mood. “Ripe crops survive the season turn” (or don’t) is a single rule that defines the genre’s entire emotional register — forgiving vs. punishing. Choose it deliberately.

The loop stack

Layer	The beat
Moment	A chore: plant / water / harvest / feed. Small, tactile, done.
Encounter	A day: spend energy/time on the plan, watch it advance a step.
Session	A season: the plan matures; you reinvest the yield.
Meta	The year and beyond: upgrades, relationships, land, mastery.

Essential systems

System	Why this genre needs it
`system-resource-loops`	Gather→convert→spend (seed→crop→cash→seed) is the beating core; bottlenecks (energy, water, space) are the pacing.
`system-session-structure`	Day / season / year nesting sets session length and the calendar arithmetic every plan is checked against.
`system-economy`	Faucets (harvest) and sinks (seeds, upgrades) must keep reinvestment strictly better than hoarding.
`pattern-pacing-and-tension`	Peaks (harvest day, festival) and valleys (the mid-season wait); the calm needs a rhythm, not a flatline.
`system-collectibles`	Recipes, shipped items, friendships — the open-ended goals that pull without pressure.
`system-onboarding`	The first day must teach plant→water→wait→harvest by doing, on one short crop.

Content & difficulty model

The calendar is a proof, not a setting. Assert seasonLength ≥ max(growDays) + harvestSlack against the actual crop table. A crop that can’t finish its season is a broken promise; a lint should refuse it.
Difficulty is solvency margin. A “hard” year is a tighter budget, not a meaner world. Prove a diligent bot reaches the target by day N; prove no-water → no-growth; prove wither is honest (a crop dies visibly, on a rule).
Reinvest must beat hoard. Assert the delta — a reinvesting bot out-earns a hoarding one (FUN.md measures 740 vs 236). If hoarding competes, the economy has no loop.
Expose the countdown. Nights left in season is the single most load-bearing number; it turns anxiety into planning.
Content grows sideways. More crops, animals, tools, and social threads — width the player chooses, not a difficulty wall. Solvency stays gentle; ambition scales.

Signature-mechanic seeds

Farming sim but you tend a garden of grief — each crop is a memory; the season ends when you’re ready to release it (tonal + mechanic-swap; the process-the-twist worked example — calm becomes coming-to-terms).
Farming sim but the plot is one screen, no expansion — a hard spatial constraint turns every tile into a decision (constraint; solvency gets tight and tactical).
Farming sim but crops are tiles you match — harvest is a board clear; a bend toward genre-match3 where planting sets up cascades (mechanic-swap).
Farming sim but nights are survival — day tends, night defends the harvest with a fuel-budgeted lamp (structure + tonal; splices genre-survival-horror‘s dread you can budget onto a cozy day).
Farming sim but the whole game is one exposed rule — connect farms to yurts, and that single legible predicate is the content (structure; the Tiny Yurts read).

Common pitfalls

Calendar that lies. Crops that can’t ripen in their season, or a season that ends mid-growth without warning — the fastest way to break the “plans come true” promise.
Hidden critical numbers. If the player can’t see nights-left or grow-time, they can’t plan, and planning is the fun.
Hoarding beats reinvesting. Kills the loop; the economy must reward putting the yield back in.
Fake calm. No peaks, no valleys, just undifferentiated chores → boredom. pattern-pacing-and-tension gives the calm its rhythm.
Width as busywork. New crops that don’t change a decision are clutter; each should open a plan the player couldn’t make before.

Anchors

anchor-stardew-valley — the calm compulsion loop, open-ended goals, and the day/season/year nesting; the definitive DNA for this genre.
anchor-animal-crossing — the zero-fail, real-clock sibling; steal its reward-the-ritual-of-returning loop if you want to drop the season-end pressure.

Verify

Diligent bot wins by day N; no-water-no-growth; wither honesty; reinvest-vs-hoard delta; golden year → design/FUN.md §15 · Farming/life sim. Design the calendar and loop here; prove the inequality there.

Composes with

system-resource-loops — the seed→crop→cash→seed cycle at the genre’s heart.
system-session-structure — the day/season/year calendar the plans are checked against.
anchor-stardew-valley — the touchstone whose loop you import pre-solved.