Exploring the System in 3rd World Farmer
This game is a more personal version of Civilization-style sandbox strategy game, or you could say, a more serious and depressing Family Ville. As a player, I am in charge of making daily decisions for a family of African farmers. On the positive side, I can decide what crops and animals to have for the next year and buy simple tools to decrease risks and increase harvest. On the negative side, there are often unexpected challenges (a family member falls ill or a military base is built near my land) as well as large spendings (sending kids to school).
The system in this game refers to the status of this family, represented by the amount of their savings and status of health/work power of family members. The input includes money that is gained through farming, and the output is the various reasons you have to spend money on. With the goal of maintaining equilibrium or even making this system better, the game forces players to make many difficult decisions (whether to buy medicine or wait for next year). It is also made more interesting when unexpected events take place (the seeds next year is much more expensive, some of your animals die, and someone from the outside world reaches out to you with good/bad purposes).
The system is supposed to lead to frustrating results to show the dangers of the life of a 3rd World farmer. No matter how hard the player tries to prosper, disasters like civil war or drought would interrupt this process and is likely to destroy the home he/she carefully builds. Therefore, the game achieves its educational goal by showing this up-and-then-down progress of the system.
