Innovative game provides easy entertainment

Not your typical farming game, Hay Day puts a unique spin on owning a virtual farm. In this game, players not only farm, but fish and mine as well. As an app that attracts hundreds of thousands of players, Hay Day sets the bar for farming games. 

Hay Day’s gaming logic adds to its uniqueness. Contrary to real life, in Hay Day, crops never die, milk remains fresh and pigs give the player bacon without dying.

Finnish game developer Supercell released Hay Day in 2012. Supercell created other popular games such as Clash Royal, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, and most recently, Brawl Stars.

Clash Royal generates the most notoriety of these games, falling just short of five stars on the Apple app store; it boasts over one million reviews. Hay Day reaches 4.7 stars on 210,000 reviews, not reaching the popularity of Clash Royale, but still decent for a mobile game.

Hay Day starts off by providing a backstory telling the player how they came upon their farm. The beginning farm consists of a farmhouse, barn and silo all requiring a swipe of the player’s finger to fix up. A scarecrow by the name of Mr. Wicker guides the player through the beginning steps and introduces them to new things as they unlock them. 

The main goal of Hay Day is to grow the player’s farm by earning coins and experience. Experience (or XP) allows players to level up and unlock new elements of the game. Utilized to buy new buildings and items from other players along with unlocking new areas of the farm, players use XP to keep their number of coins high. 

Fulfilling orders rewards players with coins and XP. Different types of orders exist within Hay Day, starting with the truck orders. Truck orders request a number of items that the player must produce. Once meeting the required items and sending them off on the truck, the truck comes back with the reward. Boat orders and town orders unlock as the player progresses in the game.I

Similar to every other game created by Supercell, Hay Day contains a social option in the form of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods allow players to form a team of sorts to donate items, fulfill each other’s orders, and compete in derbies. Derbies create competition between neighborhoods as they promote completing missions to prove who’s team yields better results.

The game’s simple goals and immersive gameplay allows players to use their imagination to personalize the roleplaying experience. This game allows players to feel as if they actually build up their own farm from the ground. Neighborhoods also add to the feeling because of the help that neighbors give to farms.

In the following tweet, Hay Day takes suggestions from players on Twitter, Sept. 14. Hay Day posted a tweet urging viewers to come up with new recipe ideas for the game.

What new dessert would you like to see in the game? Tell us your ideas! #dessert #goodstuff pic.twitter.com/yVwtcAtANP

— Hay Day (@hayday) September 14, 2019

Personally, I enjoy this game because of its relaxing atmosphere and easy-to-learn mechanics. My farm currently stands at level 25 after playing the game for an estimated total of 8 months. Players who desire to see faster progress can “grind” the game more often and prioritize what they spend their coins on.  

Hay Day contains a few flaws that I notice when I play. Supercell created a large amount of content in the game. To unlock this content, players need to reach levels that a casual player such as myself find difficult to attain without investing a lot of time. Another flaw I see resides in the building process. For example, after I reached level 24, the mine became repairable. After saving enough coins to repair the mine, it took 35 hours to complete. 

For Hay Day players seeking to improve their game, Appamatix published a list of tips to increase the amounts of money made in the game. These tips involve buying and reselling and using the mine to obtain diamonds. To new players, I recommend always creating more products than you need because they sell for coins. Most of the coins I make in the game come from selling to other players. 

Hay Day recently celebrated its seventh anniversary with a sizable update introducing a new area of the game to explore. The valley consists of gameboard-like mechanics allowing players to complete small orders along the path. Players obtain tokens as a reward that they can spend on rare items such as axes and dynamite.

Hay Day, while free for download on the App Store and Google Play Store, contains optional in-app purchases.

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Brayden Iest can be reached via Twitter and email.