character sheets, get your character sheets here!
+ more updates about our narrative (and a new name, surprise surprise)
We submitted to the second part of IndieCade's Climate Jam 2025, the prototype phase, last week!
Since our game is narrative-driven, most of the prototyping surrounded our story and characters—as well as our name. We've updated it from "Sustain" to "Consensus" to reflect that the primary gameplay is performing tasks to gain buy-in from individuals with unique personalities. ("Sustain" was better suited in an earlier phase when we were focused more on the act of keeping a farm alive over time.)
With all that said, we've got some character sheets for the player character and two of the four NPCs!
Descriptions for all the characters, including those without unique sheets yet, are below:
Jules
is our PC. They dropped out of the sustainability studies program at Frontier College a few years ago because nobody believed in their passion for aquaponics. They van-life'd around the country, supporting themself by documenting the effects of the climate crisis. A few months ago, a professor they'd become close with offered to let Jules take over her farm, as she's moving to a different area to flee the drought. Jules now has a chance to experiment with aquaponics. We need to set up our farm and recruit some friends to join!
Elliott
was our roommate at Frontier College, where he studied technology management. He moved to San Francisco after graduation because the AI SaaS startup he created in one of his business classes blew up. He may seem imperious or vapid, but he has a good heart if you can find it. Real reason he founded the company? To try and guarantee a better future for his younger siblings. We need to convince him that given the climate crisis, self-reliance through small-scale farming is a legitimate means of securing a future—and that farming doesn't mean you can't use technology.
Max
is Jules' younger cousin who just completed his first year at Frontier. Max is a visual and digital artist who feels disillusioned by college: What's the point of an art education while the world's facing climate destruction? And what's the point of trying to address the climate crisis when it seems so vast? We need to convince Max that nihilism isn't the answer and that both small-scale farming and art are valuable.
Ren
is Jules' and Elliott's classmate/friend—and someone Jules briefly dated. We're no longer together, but it's (mostly) fine between us. Ren's degree is in applied social justice. She's concerned with the climate crisis, but her primary concern is what happens to people and community before, during, and after the crisis peaks. We need to convince Ren that small-scale farming isn't individualistic and that community resilience can combat harmful effects of the climate crisis.
Lydia
is Jules' and Max's childhood friend and a third-generation farmer. Spending time on Lydia's family's farm was a major inspiration for Jules—it's where their interests in aquaponics and land stewardship stem from. Lydia wants to be independent and leave her family farm, but she's worried about abandoning her values of caring for animals and the environment. We need to convince her to join our farm and put her experience towards climate resilience.
