I love the game Hay Day and I’m proud of it

Photo by Sarah Zhou

Gross.

Since the first time I got my hands on an iPad in 2010 (no I wasn’t an iPad kid), I’ve downloaded hundreds of mobile games — ranging from Sunnyville Baby Pet Salon to Call of Duty: Mobile — but throughout my iPad’s lifetime, only one has remained: Hay Day.

Hay Day is a simulation app where users build their own community around a farm, and throughout the process, unlock features to help them continue, such as a fishing boat, jeweler and animal sanctuaries by earning XP (experience). 

I’ve been living the farm life since Hay Day came out in 2012 and, while all my attempts to make it the next Animal Crossing within my friend group have died, it is still a game I frequently play in my free time.

When I started playing it in elementary school, Hay Day was all the buzz. It was trendy to be harvesting wheat on the daily, with classmates spending real money on the app to level up faster. In the first grade, one of my friends spent around $100 (you can imagine how jealous I was) to purchase unlimited diamonds for his Christmas present and I thought he was a huge idiot for that.

I was wrong. I had largely underestimated how consistently I would be using the app for the next decade — I have been playing Hay Day longer than I’ve been doing addition. Looking back at the inflationary prices Hay Day set for 100 diamonds, his investment was basically the equivalent of buying shares of Apple for $5 in 2008.

But after reaching level 50-something on my iPad in elementary school, disaster hit when my iPad broke and — since silly little me didn’t set up a Game Center account — all my progress was lost. And no, emailing the wrong support email address asking for an account you don’t have the name, password or Apple ID of with the spelling of a fourth grader (or, in my case, spelling appropriate for my age) does not get your precious Hay Day account back. 

I was devastated. I didn’t play Hay Day for a whole two days. But even though I was able to play on a new account, starting fresh is a daunting task: I was back to the first 10-ish levels where the only tasks consist of  harvesting wheat and collecting eggs, which despite how exhilarating it might sound, is actually incredibly monotonous. 

Unlike 4-year-old me, 9-year-old me didn’t feel like “persevering” through the first few levels to get to the fun part of the game, so I didn’t bother to level up on my new account until around five years later when the pandemic struck. At that point, swiping my finger across a screen in a circle for an hour straight (sadly) became more entertaining than listening to Biology lectures about DNA replication.

But, I still thought I was a little too cool to be playing a game that is an age 4+ rating on the App Store, so it’s taken me four years to reach level 34. Recently, however, I’ve become more active on the app because as we all know, juniors have so much free time on their hands and I make (very) excellent life decisions.

While Hay Day is fun for keeping yourself occupied when waiting in line or when you don’t feel like writing 150 plus marks on the AP U.S. Government homework responses, a lot of the game makes no sense and infuriates me to think about.

I literally downloaded Reddit just to figure out “how to get coins FAST,” and while reading the comments on a post, I found a thread of in-game suggestions from Reddit users that the Hay Day Developers have failed to implement after years, which include data-backed arguments (excel spreadsheet and everything) about how the game is poorly designed and how apparently players need “baby-farms” (alternate accounts) to actually effectively play the game. 

My personal grievances include how one gold bar sells less for 10 blackberries, how the neighborhoods where people are supposed to trade and help each other include the world’s most selfish bunch of *******, how badly the boat and truck orders rip players off and how atrocious some of the graphics in the game are. The groaning cows and moaning goats are cute when you’re 7, but are now revolting to look at.

Still, because of my generous personality, I am able to overlook the flaws in this app — nothing keeps me from collecting bacon and harvesting strawberries at 8 a.m.