Big Farm Homestead is a mobile farming sim by Goodgame Studios, and the first entry in the Big Farm series built with story at the forefront.
I was Lead Narrative Designer on Big Farm Homestead, building the cast, the world, and the story from the ground up: a family drama in the rural American Midwest.
Homestead was built on the structure of an existing game, reusing its systems for progression, unlocks, and crafting trees, so the story had to work inside those confines. Each main character was tied to a gameplay mechanic, and those mechanics had to unlock on the previous game's schedule. This, in turn, meant that important characters and narrative setup had to happen simultaneously.
Early on, that left almost no room to introduce a character, set a stake, and start an arc before the next unlock landed. So it was vital that these characters and their stories made a fast first impression, as many players will be logging in for ten minutes on their daily commute, or playing with half an eye on the TV.
Every character, whether a ranch owner, a train conductor, or a barge runner, needed a reason to be there, something they wanted, and a relationship with the rest of the cast, whether that led to drama, romance, or friendship. Those arcs had to keep running past the end of the story, since a live-service game doesn't have one.
I wrote first drafts of the script, then worked with a group of designers to refine them. Big Farm Homestead came out in 2025 and has achieved nearly three million downloads across iOS and Android in less than a year, while also receiving 4.6 on Google Play and 4.7 on the App Store.