The Farmer Was Replaced · game

parts

6 mechanics, as The Farmer Was Replaced does them

core · 3

resources & production

Crop cultivation

Grass, bushes, trees, carrots, pumpkins, cactus, and sunflowers are planted, grown, and harvested by the drone, with Watering and Fertilizer unlocks that act on growth.

control & automation

A Python-like language stored in .py files drives the drone; every operation has a tick cost (arithmetic 1, a successful move 200, a failed action 1) that scales with the speed factor, and Megafarm adds more drones.

progression & goals

Tech tree

Harvested resources buy unlocks with prerequisites, including farm expansion, speed, loops, variables, functions, lists, dictionaries, polyculture, mazes, dinosaurs, and the leaderboard.

supporting · 3

space & construction

Adjacency scoring

Under polyculture, grass, bushes, trees, and carrots request a different companion plant on a tile within three moves, found with get_companion(); planting it multiplies yield, 5x before upgrades and doubling per upgrade.

space & construction

Design performance rating

Leaderboards run the player's program from fixed starts until a resource target is met, repeated to at least two hours, and score the average completion time.

control & automation

Execution budget

Every operation costs simulated ticks (arithmetic 1, a successful move() 200, a failed action 1), so optimizing means cutting drone actions more than statements.

core loop

write a drone program -> execute it on the farm grid -> plant, water, and harvest crops -> spend harvests on unlocks -> new language features and crops change what code is worth writing -> optimize for speed and leaderboard times

design notes

The Farmer Was Replaced teaches programming by making farm labor too slow to do any other way: the drone does nothing unless code tells it to, and the language itself is unlocked piecemeal (loops, variables, functions, lists, dictionaries) with farm expansion and new crops. Execution is metered in simulated ticks rather than real CPU: literals and assignment are free, arithmetic and getters cost 1 tick, and a successful move() costs 200, so optimization means reducing drone actions more than reducing statements. Crops add algorithmic puzzles: polyculture companions requested within three moves multiply yield, harvesting the sunflower with the most petals (out of at least ten) gives eight times the power that doubles drone speed, and mazes and dinosaurs need search-style code. Leaderboards run the player's program as fixed-start simulations totaling at least two hours and score the average time. Code lives in .py files that external editors can edit.