The Best Mobile Farming Apps
I am burdened with glorious farms! I seriously have so many virtual farms that it would probably be less work to move on to a real farm. But at least this way I don’t have to actually touch an udder.
There’s a constant buzz, click, clack, or moo coming from my phone to alert me that a farm needs my attention. With so many farms running at once, there’s always a cow that needs milking, an animal that needs feeding, or a crop that needs picking. Not to mention my battery always needs charging. I got an alert a few days ago from AT&T warning me that I was approaching my data limit and I’m almost positive it’s from farming all day while not being connected to WiFi. Oops.
Anyway, I love farm apps and I’ve played every one that I could get my hands on. Here’s the order in which I like them and would recommend them to you:
Hay Day
I’ve been playing Hay Day for about two years now and it’s probably the best farming game I’ve ever played. What I love best about it is that even though it has in-game purchases, I’ve never had to spend a dime to play. I hate games that are free, but then you can’t complete anything unless you shell out real money. It’s easy to accumulate the in-game currency of diamonds, but I rarely need to use them. I currently have over a hundred and I really only use them to speed up an item I need finished within a certain time limit. The animals are adorable. When the pigs are ready to give bacon, they get fat. A metal tube wraps around them and squeezes out the bacon and they become skinny until you feed them again. It’s cute. And they update the animals to match seasons and holidays. During winter they wear earmuffs and scarves, during Halloween they wear costumes, and etc. etc. It’s a great game.
Also, Hay Day has hilarious commercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYIRuk-mza0
Barn Voyage
I’ve been playing this game lately more than Hay Day. Okay, also more than any other game. Don’t judge me like you don’t play Candy Crush on the toilet. Anyway, there’s always something to do. I could come back every twenty minutes and have crops to collect, animals to feed, milk and other foods to collect. I don’t like having to wait 12 hours after I plant a crop to be able to do anything with it. I ain’t got that kind of time. Some games give you impossible goals to fill, things you have to pay money for and fuck that. But not this one. It might take a bit of time to complete it, but nothing that feels impossible. Nothing turns me off from a game more than goals that feel impossible. This may soon surpass Hay Day as my favorite mobile game.
Farmville 2: Country Escape
Like its Facebook counterpart, Country Escape is slow to load and lags once it does. There are always quests/goals that can’t be met because they require more resources than you could ever get without paying real money. Half the time when I touch the screen to move it around, I accidentally pick up a crop or a tree or something and it tries to move. It’s really obnoxious. There’s a lot you can’t do unless you pay real money. The barn fills up very quickly, because only in Farmville can 40 pieces of wheat fill up an entire barn. You can sell off your excess stuff but you only get four slots and it can take days and days to get that stuff to sell. I’ve had to resort to throwing stuff away just to make room for other stuff. If you want to upgrade your barn you’ll have to shell out some actual cash. No, thanks. But, while there’s a lot to complain about with this game, I actually really like it. I like the way the animals dance around when they’re full of eggs or milk or whatever it is they make. I don’t expect Zynga to do the logical thing and fix the problems because they haven’t bothered to do so with the two Facebook installments so i’ve just accepted it as it is and I limit my playing of it to once or twice a day, but I do still play it because I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.
Township
Township is a mix of farm and city building. There are crops you grow to create feed for the cows, sheep, and chickens to get milk, wool, and eggs. You can use this stuff to make cheese, butter, sweaters, cookies, etc. You can also build houses and factories and stores. The more you build, the more your population expands. Right now my town of Seacrestia is kind of jumbled but it’s been pretty easy to expand and soon enough I’ll be able to put all my factories on one side and my houses on another and it’ll look great. You just got to be patient to get there.
My one complaint about the game is that I don’t appreciate that I paid coins to build a building, waited for it to build, and then still have to collect materials to finish building it. The materials are hard to come by unless you pay real money for them and the materials I do have are taking up the limited space I have in my barn, but if I get rid of them I’ll never finish building. I currently have 5 buildings waiting to be finished. I enjoy that it’s farming and city building, so I’m sticking with it for a little while longer. If I can hold out long to upgrade my barn a few more times, it should make gameplay that much easier.
Farm Story 2
This game is cute, but… I don’t know why I’m putting it on this list. I don’t know why I keep playing it. It’s awful and needs to get itself in check, because it’s only embarassing itself.
