Hay Day: Developer interview
Hay Day is an iOS exclusive freemium farming game from Supercell. The game released in May 2012 and gains its popularity in a blink of time and suddenly becomes one of the most downloaded apps in the App Store. Now, with nearly a year has passed, it can still holds its place in the very top ranks of the Top Grossing app on the App Store.
Hay Day is a fantastic twist of normal farming game, it involves producing, harvesting, decorating, and selling/buying a variety of different farm products, its graphics are colorful and attractive, gameplay is extremely smooth, the social features are great and yes, it is insanely addictive! Recently, we got in touch with Stephan Demirdjian, product manager of Hay Day to talk a little bit more about this amazing game!
There are so many freemium farming games in the market, what makes Hay Day so different and successful?
When we started developing Hay Day we didn't really look at other farm games but more at the device at hand: What kind of game experience can we create for the iPad and all its technical capabilities? That was when the unique swiping controls were created. We also wanted to build a game where players have freedom over how they manage their farms, rather than giving them quests to fulfill. We trust the players! On top of that, the gameplay is quite realistic. Rather than collecting money directly from the fields, players must collect real crops and then put them to use in various ways in order to sell them and collect coins. The buying and selling in-game also leads to meaningful social interactions, which players enjoy.
