Hay Day

This farming sim was among the first mobile games that were fun to play with others back in 2012. (Words with Friends and Draw Something are also in that list.)

Is Hay Day a ripoff of Farmville? I have no idea.

I do know it is a lot of mindless clicking and swiping to tend to a garden and farm animals. Every element has a cost of resources, time or both. The social component allowed for the selling and swapping of goods or having friends chop down dead trees or bushes.

It was terribly mindlessly fun, for many many months.

Then the developer started adding boats and fishing and horse races and jewelry shops and mining for coal and extravagant lawn decorations and gold, purple, blue and pink tickets.

Everyone lost interest and abandoned their plots.

February 24, 2023 — A decade later and I decided to log in and see if my farm was still there. Most of my friend connections disappeared when I got rid of Facebook, but everything else is left exactly as it was… Pigs pointing at their hungry mouths to be fed… Cows and chickens sat bloated and ready for milking and egg gathering… Corn, soybeans, carrots and sugarcane ready for harvest…

And there are a whole slew of new buttons to push, but most importantly—a Farm Pass monthly subscription service and fee. (That’s the only way you can get the chick tickets to get any of the fanciful new birds.)

It’s still mindlessly fun.

(I wrote about this game first in 2013: Making Hay)

Hay Day goods including fruits, vegetables, food items, animal feed and construction materials
My current inventory