A Farm About Digging A Tunnel To Escape Totalitarianism

By day, we're a family of farmers. At night, we dig our way to freedom.

RESETTLEMENT ORDER

Household No. 114 is registered at the plot. The house and the yard are yours.

From tomorrow the household is on planned labour.

Glory to Party.

You fill in the blank. Before day one, your family invents the regime — and then has to live under it. Grow its wheat. Hang its Leader on your wall. Smile at its patrols. And when nobody is looking, dig.

SOME JOBS TAKE TWO

Play alone or as a family of up to four: father, mother, son and daughter. The saw has a handle at each end, the stove is always hungry, and someone has to keep the beds watered while someone else is underground. The household shares one wallet, one Social Rating and all of the blame.

"A member of your family doused a patrolman with water."

THE PARTY NEEDS WHEAT

The plan comes by post every Monday and is due on Sunday. It is always achievable, and always a little bigger than last week's. Grow what the Party demands, keep a little back for your own table, and don't come up short: the Party does not like to be disappointed. Fulfil the plan, and the state may even trust you with the key to the cellar.

THE OTHER WAY OUT

"Leaving the settlement is by pass only. Your name is not on the list."

So you take a lantern down to the cellar. Behind its wall there is earth, then stone, then earth again — and somewhere beyond the border wall, the other side. The regime never comes down here. Every metre takes you further from HOME and closer to FREEDOM.

CREATE THE REGIME YOU WANT TO ESCAPE FROM

Paint the flag together. Pick the colours, write the mottos, draw the Leader. Whatever you scribble in two minutes will be watching you for weeks — from a billboard the size of a house and, if you know what's good for you, from your own living-room wall. Then dress the guards in the uniform you painted and watch them patrol your street.

ISSUED TO EVERY HOUSEHOLD

• Room for a family of four (online co-op for 1–4 players)

• A Social Rating, kept up to date by the state

• A portrait of the Leader (sold separately, strongly recommended)

• Neighbours who notice everything

• A cellar (locked)

• Measures, should they become necessary