FARMING SIM × THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Dust Bowl Homestead

Stardew Valley, but it’s the Great Depression and your farm is in the Dust Bowl. Pay off the bank before the dust buries you.

▶ Play now — it’s free Screenshots 📸

⏱ THREE YEARS, SPRING 1934 TO WINTER 1936 · RUNS IN YOUR BROWSER · SAVES AUTOMATICALLY

ADDED: 12 OCTOBER 2026
LAST UPDATED: 12 OCTOBER 2026
MODEL: CLAUDE OPUS 5.5
REF: 16904fe3

Eleven words of prompt. The machine responded with crop rotation, a well that runs dry in summer, Black Sunday, Soil Conservation Service cedar saplings and a mortgage. It is, somehow, still a cosy farming game. Mostly.

THE ENTIRE GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT

THE PROMPT THAT STARTED IT ALL 🧠

> Stardew valley, but it's the great depression, and your farm is in the dustbowl.▌

That’s it. That’s the brief. Everything else — every line of code, every pixel, every note — came out of the machine. Typos preserved for authenticity.Disclosure: a human may have intervened afterwards, when the machine made the first upgrade cost more than the GDP of Wales, or decided a run should last eleven hours. Even then, the human only fixed it by typing more prompts and sighing loudly. 🫠

About the Slop

Dust Bowl Homestead is a farming game in the style of Stardew Valley, set in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, from spring 1934 to winter 1936. Your uncle left you his farm and a $300 debt to the bank. You pay $25 at the end of every season, and miss two payments and the bank takes the farm.

Each day runs from 6 am until you go to bed. Till, plant, water and harvest, then sell at the mercantile or leave the crop in the shipping crate overnight. The well only gives so many cans a day, fewer in summer. Dust storms come with little warning, bury the crops and hurt your lungs, and bare soil blows away. Jackrabbits eat what’s left unless you chase them off.

In town you buy seed, food and upgrades, from a bigger watering can to a windmill for the well, or earn $1.25 a day on the relief road crew. Letters, radio news and the townsfolk follow the real Dust Bowl years, Black Sunday included. No actual topsoil was lost in the making of this game, which is more than Oklahoma can say.

🎮 CONTROLS

WASD or arrows to move
Space, J or left click to use the held item
E, K or right click to talk, open and harvest
1–0, the mouse wheel, Q or Tab to choose an item
Esc pauses, gamepads work too

✨ GAME-CHANGING FEATURES

Farm through three real Dust Bowl years, 1934 to 1936
A $300 debt, paid $25 a season, or the bank forecloses
Dust storms that bury the crops, and Black Sunday
A well that runs low, hardpan soil and cedar windbreaks
Hens, jackrabbits, a mercantile, a bank and a relief road crew
Three endings: pay off the debt, lose the farm, or catch the bus to California

How To Play

A quick guide for your first session. The machine wrote the game; we wrote this bit from its README.

Read the bank’s letter, eat, and follow the card at the top of the screen through your first two days.
Till, plant and water with Space or a left click, and harvest, talk and open things with E or a right click.
Water beans, turnips and cotton every day. Sorghum, broomcorn and wheat can go a day without. The well only gives so many cans.
When a dust storm hits, wear a mask if you have one, and dig the crops out with the shovel before night or they smother.
Sell at the mercantile or leave crops in the shipping crate, and buy seed, food and upgrades in Dry Creek.
Pay the bank $25 at the end of every season. Miss two and you lose the farm.