Gamer reviews for Hay Day

Play Hay Day While the Sun Shines

Hay Day, developed by Supercell and available to download on Anroid and iOS, was one of the first games to really catch fire as a downloadable, handheld app. It is a farming simulator, essentially, and its colorful graphics and charming design were plenty to captivate millions of gamers worldwide. You are able to manage all aspects of farming life, from making sure you are harvesting enough food to feed all of your animals, and sell for a tidy profit, to the actual feeding and maintenance of the animals themselves.

The story goes that the player has inherited a farm in much need of renovation. It's a big space, and the game guides you well through the opening sections. Your initial tasks involve just bringing the farm up to scratch - painting the barn, clearing away debris - but before long you will build lots of resource-generating structures and plots. Initially, you will just be planting crops, and there are lots on offer. From Wheat to Pumpkins, everything you grow has a use, and a price for sale. Some crops grow much faster than others too - so Wheat is pretty much the most rapid growing, and the cheapest, on offer. While you can of course sell all of your excess crops, which is what you will be doing early on in the game, before too long you will have the ability to turn these raw resources into produce.

Various buildings can be unlocked to turn Wheat into Bread, and Pumpkin into Pumpkin Pie! These items can then be sold for a far higher price than the raw resources. Once animals enter the equation, which doesn't take long, you also have to turn your crops into food for them. This constant battle between selling raw resources, turning them into animal food, or turning them into saleable produce, is at the heart of Hay Day. Your animals will eat through a lot of food, and in return provide you with some of the highest value resources in the game. Chickens lay eggs, Pigs make bacon (without having to be slaughtered, which is probably the best way Supercell could have done it), and of course Cows produce milk. From these, you can make pancakes, hamburgers, desserts, and generally a bounty of delicious food.

Later on in the game, you can also unlock Pets, such as cats and dogs, as well as going fishing. The social element comes from visiting your friends farms, which earns you certain rewards (you can also perform tasks for your friends while visiting), while you can also list excess produce for sale, and similarly purchase produce from other players. After a while, you can also fulfil boat orders at the docks on your farm. With this in mind, you will realise that there is a lot to do in Hay Day, especially when you consider that this is a free game. The premium side come in the form of Diamonds, which, as is often the case, are mainly used to speed up production times. You start the game with a fair amount, and there are numerous ways to earn them for free. You need a lot of patience to be able to avoid using them, but as mentioned earlier, there is so much to do in the game that there is usually a distraction, especially once you get to the higher levels, to help the time pass.

Hay Day was first released in 2012, so you might think that it is showing its age. However, it is still a polished and smart looking game. It is incredibly easy and satisfying to play with touch controls - one of the best examples out there of how to make a comfortable touch experience. The animals are incredibly cute, and the background and ambient noises fit the setting perfectly. The social elements are some of the best implementations seen in a game like this to date - being able to sell your items to players worldwide and visit friends' farms (though you never have to do any of this), is a great touch. For anyone yet to experience the Hay Day phenomenon, or for those merely in need of a farming fix, the game still holds up remarkably well against even the latest releases.