Pickle Factory

Small village. Big business. Four hundred zloty of debt.

Welcome to Ogórkowo, a village in Podlasie, eastern Poland. Uncle Henry left you a farm, the JANUSZEX pickle works, a radio stuck on disco polo and a four hundred zloty debt to Rysiek. Rysiek is coming on Friday. Rysiek always comes on Friday.

Pickle Factory is a first-person farming, crafting and business sim with the humour of the Polish countryside. You plant, you wash, you stand behind the counter. Even the boss works at the sink, because the boss is you and you can't afford anyone else yet.

From garden bed to pickle jar

Plant, water, harvest. Wash the cucumbers, pack the jar and add whatever is at hand: dill, garlic, horseradish, chili, honey or an oak leaf from the forest (the forester doesn't know). Seal, pasteurize, name it. Discover recipes such as Hangover Pickles (they work, don't ask how), Communist-era Pickles (a recipe from 1983: there was nothing back then, but there were pickles) or KSeF Pickles (named after the Polish e-invoice system: they hurt, but they're mandatory). Then find out whether your customers share your taste. Customers have opinions.

The farm lives by a day-and-night cycle. Rain waters the beds for free, sunshine brings tourists off the bus, and Radio Podlasie reads out the wholesale prices between one hit and the next. Between batches, take a walk around the village. Your uncle left more behind than it seemed.

Make every jar count

Stand at your roadside stall. Tourists from Warsaw arrive for an authentic countryside experience (and ask where the nearest Stonka discount store is; forty kilometres), a tourist wants a photo for TikTok, the priest disapproves of Devil's Pickles but buys them anyway, and the neighbours remember they owe you, just not how much. Every customer has tastes and a memory. Happy ones come back with a heart over their head. Offended ones remember too. When you have too many jars, Mirek buys wholesale for less. Mirek always buys for less.

Upgrade the cottage, buy equipment, hire Sebek for the field and Halinka for the workshop. Sebek waters, Halinka pasteurizes, you count whether anything is left after wages. Orders on the board have deadlines, and in Ogórkowo a deadline is not a suggestion.

Your neighbour needs a favour

Zenek borrows a hundred and pays it back when he has it. Bożena hangs the laundry and sees everything. The village head collects two zloty for the community hall and writes down who paid. Zenek's cat sleeps on your garden bed number five (alive, probably). Help the locals, follow their stories and unlock new possibilities, including a cow: Zenek's milk plus dill from the garden makes Creamy Milk Pickles. The cow does not issue invoices.

Get through your first season

Thirty days: from the debt to Rysiek, through business registration and a health inspection at nine sharp, to Cucumber Days and a jury chaired by the village head. Zenek has already entered, so the bar is low. After the season the game goes on, because the jars won't sell themselves.

• First-person farming, production and sales: your own hands, your own sink, your own stall.
  
• Nine ingredients, over a dozen named recipes and customers with opinions.
  
• A customer book: loyal ones, referrals, offended ones and those who place personal orders.
  
• Upgrades, orders with deadlines, Mirek's wholesale and workers paid by the day.
  
• Neighbours with their own stories, your uncle's secrets, a cow and Creamy Milk Pickles.
  
• Day and night, rain, morning mist, Radio Podlasie and disco polo from the cottage.
  
• Random events: Rysiek at the door, the health inspector, the village head with a collection tin, the priest by SMS, the cat.
  
• A thirty-day story season, then endless play.
  
• Polish and English text and interface. Single-player. That's all you need.
  
• And much more still to come, because Ogórkowo keeps growing and this list will get longer.