Desert Farm

How to play Desert Farm

Desert Farm is an irrigation puzzle. Each plot of desert has a cistern that holds a fixed number of litres a day and a handful of crops that need watering: a row of sorghum drinks two litres, a melon three and a date palm five.

You dig the network yourself. An open channel costs nothing, but the desert takes its share — every channel tile loses a litre to the air, and a tile dug through loose sand loses two. Clay pipe loses nothing at all, but every length costs a coin and each plot comes with only a few. Rock cannot be dug. A crop drinks from any water flowing beside it.

When you think the sums add up, open the sluice. The cistern has to cover every crop's daily need plus every litre your open channels lose, and every crop has to touch the water. Get it right and the plot is watered; the litres and coins you have left over are your score. A gauge shows the running total as you dig, so you can see exactly where the water goes. There are eight plots, each with more crops, more sand and rock and less water to spare than the last. Every plot is built from a working plan, so there is always a way — the late ones just need the best routes and the pipe laid where it saves the most.

Objective

Water every crop on all eight plots within each cistern's litres and pipe budget.

Features

• Channels that lose water, more of it on sand
• Lossless clay pipe on a tight coin budget
• A live gauge of litres needed against the cistern
• Eight plots of rising difficulty, every one solvable
• Score for the litres and coins left over

Scores are saved in this browser only. There is no global ranking and nothing is uploaded.