The Pencil Farm and the End of Flash

Oct 25
2020

What’s Happening

All the games here at The Pencil Farm were made in Flash and are played in the browser through the Flash Player browser plugin.

Adobe will no longer support or distribute the Flash Player browser plugin after December 2020. Major browsers will no longer support any version of the plugin. This means you will no longer be able to view Flash content online.

How to Keep Playing

There are a couple things you can try if you want to keep playing The Pencil Farm games after December 2020:

1. Flashpoint Archive
   The BlueMaxima Flashpoint project is attempting to archive as much Flash content as possible and make it playable in a downloadable format. I’m not associated with this project, but they seem to have the Pencil Farm games in the archive. If you have problems playing the games there, you’ll need to contact the project owners.

2. Standalone Flash Player
   You can download a version of the Flash Player that runs outside the browser. Go here and download the “Flash Player projector” for your operating system. Drag any SWF onto this version of the player to play the game locally.

   You can find an archive of the SWF files for my games here:
   The Pencil Farm Game Archive (ZIP file: 8MB)

   I don’t know if this standalone version of the player will still be available after December 2020, or how long Adobe will continue to support it.

If neither of these options work for you, unfortunately I don’t think there’s much that I can do. Most of the games are so old that I can’t even open the project files in any recent version of Flash to edit or republish them.

The Future of The Farm

I don’t have any plans to take down this site any time soon, but I imagine at some point it won’t make sense to keep it alive any longer. It’s been fun. Thanks for playing!