Introduction

For years, I loved farming in MMORPGs. Yet, as time went on, one question kept coming back to me: Why did I have to spend hours in front of the screen just to experience the joy of making progress?

That question became Farental.

After more than two years of relentless development, Farental is finally a reality. This project is actually the fourth iteration of a concept that’s been on my mind for a long time. I’d like to share with you a summary of the project and its origins. It’s also a way for me to mark this special moment as a milestone.

The Concept

In July 2009, Clodogame (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clodogame) was released, and I was immediately hooked on the concept. You send your character off to do an activity for several hours; during that time, you do other things, and when you return, you collect money to upgrade your shelter or your bag to earn even more money. Let’s be honest: the lore wasn’t its strong suit. But what I liked was the passive progression that happened without me having to spend time on it.

Also, I’m one of those people who’ve spent countless hours on MMORPGs—especially Dofus and World of Warcraft. Everyone has their own way of approaching these games, but personally, it doesn’t take five minutes before I want to farm this or that to make as much money as possible or to get a specific reward. I’ll sometimes spend three or four hours in front of my screen repeating the exact same action, simply because I like watching the numbers go up. Some of you might recognize yourselves in this description.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that free time has become precious. It’s hard for me not to see that I’m wasting my time farming in games, even though the joy I get from watching my total money or my XP increase is still the same as it used to be. This creates a certain amount of frustration. So I started thinking about Clodogame again… What if I could farm just like in the MMORPGs I love so much, without having to spend all my time on it? Of course, other games already offer some form of passive progression. But they almost always let you pay to go faster.

Farental takes the opposite approach: everyone progresses at the same pace.

That’s the whole difference—it’s not about going faster. No matter how long it takes, Farental doesn’t steal your time.

The Universe

The world in which your adventure unfolds is also a project in its own right—a world that wasn’t originally intended to be a video game. Like many people, as a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, etc.), I’ve always wanted to try my hand at creating an original universe in which I could bring independent stories to life.

I’ve been working on the Farental universe for a number of years now, and it’s still far from complete. You’ll discover just a tiny sliver of it in this first version of the game. But I don’t plan to stop there. There’s a lot more to tell.

A Rocky Start

As mentioned in the introduction, Farental as it exists today is the fourth iteration of this idea. Before discovering Go, I experimented with several different technologies. I think it’s important to note that I didn’t start using AI to help me code until January 2026.

In 2022, I initially wanted to create 100% web-based versions—first an attempt in PHP, without a framework, just like how websites were built in the 2000s. The project was well underway but had numerous architectural issues, and I didn’t enjoy the development process.

I then moved on to Java, but unfortunately, I quickly realized I didn’t like it. That version didn’t get very far. But after each version, my vision for the project evolved, and I learned a great deal.

I then restarted the project using Django and Python. Unfortunately, I abandoned that version—I’d lost my motivation, and web development had never really excited me. I knew I wasn’t approaching the project the right way.

So I launched the API server in Go on June 17, 2024. I was very motivated because I wasn’t supposed to be working on the project alone. Someone had found the idea interesting and offered to build a front-end application. So I’d finally found a way of working that I loved. I could finally focus on the game mechanics and data. I wasn’t wasting time on front-end trivialities. But after almost a year of work, I had to accept that this collaboration would probably never come to fruition. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I chose to finish Farental on my own.

That’s when my work on the client began. First, a desktop client developed in Go using Fyne. But I quickly realized that I was becoming more and more drawn to the terminal.

For those who are curious, here’s a brief overview of the evolution from the Fyne client version to the terminal version:

Orvyn, Lokyn, and the TUI client

For those unfamiliar with the term, TUI stands for Terminal User Interface. For some time now—even back when I was working on the Django + Python version—I’d had my eye on the Textual library (https://textual.textualize.io/). And this curiosity was confirmed by Go and BubbleTea (https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea), so I took the plunge and started writing my Farental client with BubbleTea.

I worked on it for several months, and I loved it. Unfortunately, the version I was building was 100% static, unable to resize, and it was difficult to create content with complex interfaces. I remember it was when I was working on the mail editor:

That was the first truly complex interface in the game that I had to create. Not only did I run into the complexity of managing focus, but above all, I realized I couldn’t continue with a static interface that wouldn’t resize.

So I made a very important decision at that point and began developing Orvyn (https://github.com/halsten-dev/orvyn). All the experience I’d gained with BubbleTea allowed me to design Orvyn much more quickly. I developed all the tools I needed to rapidly build complex interfaces—all to simplify my work on the client side as much as possible.

Next, another challenge I had to tackle was multilingual support, since Farental is available in three languages: French, German, and English. At the same time, Fyne released an update with built-in multilingual support. Having had some bad experiences with certain localization standards, I was blown away by the simplicity of their solution. So I extracted and adapted their solution into a standalone library: Lokyn (github.com/halsten-dev/lokyn).

I also took the time to develop a TUI tool to manage translations for a project: Lokyn CLI (https://github.com/halsten-dev/lokyn-cli).

Streaming and AI

After coming this far on my own, without the help of AI, I decided it was time to show the project to the world. So I created my Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/halstendev).

At the same time, I started looking into AI to help me with Farental’s development. I used Claude mainly for specific tasks: several major refactorings, rewriting the content editor that I no longer wanted to maintain, and part of the website’s development.

Streaming has allowed me to focus on development and keep me from procrastinating. It’s also always very rewarding to get some feedback to help steer the project in the right direction and stay motivated.

Coming Soon

Farental is now available, so I’ll be able to keep improving it through updates. I already have plenty of ideas for upcoming updates. The priority, however, will be to add more content and new objectives, including customizable properties and hotels for sale, to bring the game’s economy to life.

Conclusion

Farental is finally available.

But above all, I feel like this is just the beginning.

For over two years, this project has taught me far more than I ever imagined. It has helped me grow in so many aspects of my passion for development.

I now hope that you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it. I can’t wait to see where this adventure takes us.

Thank you so much, and see you soon.