Under the menu and the toolbar, in the top-left, you can see the minimap (the smaller yellow box). It shows a bird's eye view of your entier puzzle. For now, our puzzle is empty, but it consists of a 3-by-3 grid of cells. The blue rectangle shows the currently visible part of your puzzle. You may drag it with your mouse in order to move around the puzzle.

The large yellow box on the right is the canvas. This is where you can add and position nodes as well as draw connections between them. Next, click this link to download a sample game, save it to disk and load it in the editor (File->Open). It should look something like this.

Each green box is called a vertex, or a node, and the blue lines are called edges, or connections. If you hover over a vertex, the panel on the left will display some information about it. Feel free to move the vertices with you left mouse button. You may use the right mouse button to draw edges between vertices by clicking and dragging. (Sorry, Mac users; splurge for a real mouse.)

Notice that the "Constellations" vertex is a different colour from the other vertices. Colour and shape denote vertex type. Left-cliking a vertex changes its type. Try clicking a vertex repeatedly; the panel on the left will display information about the current type of the vertex.

The 8 arrow buttons on the sides of the canvas are there for you to add and remove rows and columns of cells. For example, press the ">>" button near the right edge of the editor window to add a new column of cells on the right. You should now have a 2-by-3-cell puzzle. Clicking the "<<" button underneath removes the rightmost column of cells (they must be empty of vertices). Note that the Funny Farm Engine only supports square puzzles at the moment, so a 2-by-3-cell puzzle is no good.

To add a new vertex, use the "+" button on the toolbar, or the Vertex->Add menu item. Let's add a new constellation vetex. You will be prompted for the vertex's name and regex. The name is how you want your vertex to appear once it has been guessed correctly. Enter capricorn. The regex defines the set of guesses that should be accepted as correct when players are trying to uncover this vertex. Let's say that we want to accept slight misspellings, like caprikorn, as well as capricorn. Enter capricorn|caprikorn in the regex form field. (That's the pipe character; it shares a key with backslash on your keyboard.)

Regular expressions (regex) are a very powerful way to specify a collection of guesses. The pipe character is only one tiny part of the regular expression language. It stands of "or", as in "consider the guess correct if it is 'capricorn' or 'caprikorn'".

Another useful regex trick is the question mark. If you follow a character with a question mark, you are marking that character as optional. For example, if you enter "capricorns?" into the regex field, the game engine will accept both capricorn and capricorns as valid guesses.

To learn about the full power of regular expressions, see the official reference

No matter how easy you make your puzzle, chances are that many players will not be able to uncover all of the vertices. Having a meta-puzzle gives those players a way to win (and hence, receive a pleasant burst of endorphins) and provides them with an alternate, more achievable goal.

You may mark several of your vertices as meta-clues (type yellow). If you look around the example puzzle, you will find two such vertices ("30 rock" and "12 monkeys"). Once a player uncovers all of the meta-clue vertices, they will get a chance to guess the answer to the meta-puzzle. In fact, from that point on, every guess they enter is automatically checked against the meta-puzzle regex.

If a guess matches the meta-puzzle regex, the player wins the game. You may edit your meta-puzzle regex by clicking Extra->Meta puzzle on the top menu bar.

Do not forget to save your work frequently (File->Save). Once you are satisfied with your puzzle, you should upload it to this server by going to the upload page. (You will be asked to log in to Google with a valid Google account.) Then, you will need to give a short name and a longer description to your puzzle. Once you click "Submit", you will be able to play your puzzle immediately. Feel free to share the link with your friends and invite them to play, too.

If you want to share your puzzle with the rest of the world, send me a message, and I will feature your game on the front page.

I will happily host all of your games for free, but I do reserve the right to show some unintrusive ads alongside your game and keep all of the revenue. I also, obviously, reserve the right to publish all or parts of your puzzle on this website (in order to let people play your game) or other places (in case I move hosts or create a new game engine). I will not intentionally give anyone solutions or hints to your puzzles.

There is a "Hints" link at the top of the puzzle page, but it does not do anything useful now. If you have good ideas on how to make hints work, let me know. I'm still thinking about it.

I hope you create some exciting games that beat the original Funny Farm in quality and popularity. I'm working on Funny Farm 2 myself...