Here at MakeUseOf, we love gaming. We like lots of different genres, including farming games. There’s something intensely relaxing about raising livestock and watering crops without having to do any of the hard work. Hence our appreciation of farming sims.
While there are tons of farming games that you can play on PC, there are also plenty of free-to-play farming games available to play on mobile. So, after playing a bunch to sort the wheat from the chaff, here are the best farming games for your smartphone.
1. Tiny Sheep
Tiny Sheep is exactly what it sounds like—a mobile farming game that allows you to raise sheep on a rustic piece of land.
The main goal of this game? Buy sheep, feed the sheep, and sell their wool for new supplies to make your farm more efficient.
It’s like a cross between a pet game and a farming simulator. With absolutely adorable graphics and a very simple setup, Tiny Sheep ends up being really simple to use.
Right from the get-go, this farming sim guides you along your path to wooly dominance with handy visual instructions. There are both in-app purchases and in-game ads, but found that these didn’t spoil our fun.
Is Tiny Sheep the flashiest, most addictive game on our list? No, but it’s very entertaining.
Download: Tiny Sheep for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
2. Hay Day
Hay Day was a farming simulation game that we honestly did not expect to enjoy as much as we did. On the surface it looks very similar to Farmville, which was definitely not a mark in its favor.
To our pleasant surprise, however, this game turned out to be fun and incredibly engaging. Hay Day strikes the right level between automation and customization. The goal of it is to raise livestock and plant crops to turn a profit. You can then use that profit to upgrade your farm.
Your farm will run on its own while you’re not actively playing the game. When you are actively playing it you can upgrade and buy new items, animals, or tools.
You can also move these items, animals, or tools around on your map to make your farm look exactly the way that you want.
Outside of this clever balance between automation and customization:
- The levelling-up system in Hay Day is simple to follow.
- The rewards are paced at an even speed so that the game doesn’t get boring, but you don’t run out of reasons to come back for more.
In fact, the game played so smoothly for us that we even changed our mind about the art style and the idea that it was “Farmville-esque.”
The best thing of all? While Hay Day uses in-app purchases, the game is still functional without them. You also don’t have to see so many ads that they interfere with the game itself.
Download: Hay Day for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
3. Egg, Inc.
Egg, Inc. is a farming game that I’ve personally been playing for over a year, mostly because I’m a huge fan of its in-game aesthetic. If you open it up, you’ll see that the game goes for bright, quirky, and colorful, with a sort of “indie” look.
As an almost entirely automated tapping game that runs in the background, the goal of Egg, Inc. is to build up a poultry farm and turn it into a massive, profit-making machine.
The ways that you can increase your profits are by:
- Tapping the screen to lay more eggs.
- Researching new chicken-raising technologies.
- Upgrading your farm building or supplies.
While this game does have a nice look, it’s unfortunately one of those extremely simple apps that only needs to be played for 10 minutes a night. There is basically no free choice left for the gamer, due to everything being automated. So anything more than 10 minutes and you’ll get bored.
Download: Egg, Inc. for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
4. Blocky Farm
Looking for a game that is almost identical to Hay Day in terms of game mechanics, but which has a distinctly different look?
Try Blocky Farm, a free-to-play farming simulator available for both Android and iOS. When we say the two games are nearly identical, by the way, we mean literally.
The gameplay between these two apps mirrors each other.
- Both Hay Day and Blocky Farm have a similar level of in-game purchases, and the same level of ads.
- Both of them give you easy-to-understand instructions, and help you work towards your goal of building up a profitable farm.
- In both games, the way to turn a profit is through raising livestock and planting crops.
The only major difference is that Blocky Farm mimics an older style of pixelated graphics. You also get to buy, raise, and play with your own pets early on in the game, unrelated to the farm itself.
Choosing which game you want to engage with really depends on what kind of graphics you like, as they’re both so similar. If you love anything with a retro aesthetic, here’s an additional list of free retro mobile games for nostalgia junkies.
Download: Blocky Farm for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
5. Farm Heroes Saga
Last on our list is Farm Heroes Saga, a tapping puzzle game with a distinct farming sim appeal.
Like Tiny Sheep, Farm Heroes Saga is kind of a cross-genre blend. The main goal of the game is to match different fruits and veggies on a checkered playing board.
- When you match three or more veggies of the same type in a row, they are cleared from the map.
- The points gained from these matches go towards your overall score, which needs to pass a certain threshold in order for you to level up.
- Through the points that you gain on each level, you also get to move your player across a larger playing board in Farm Heroes Saga—similar to the winding path that you see in My Tamagotchi Forever, another free-to-play mobile game.
- As you reach the higher levels, you can gain different animals, objects and power-ups to help you around the farm.
While this game is absolutely not a simulator in the traditional sense—it definitely leans more on the puzzle side—Farm Heroes Saga is a good alternative for people who want to play something farming-related for a few minutes each night.
Download: Farm Heroes Saga for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
The Best Farming Games to Scratch That Itch
Perhaps the reason why mobile farming games are so popular has to do less with farming itself and more with the “idea” of it. After all, farming is a labor-intensive career, but it’s fun to imagine growing your own food with almost no hard work involved.
Looking for some other simulator games to play? Then here is a list of the best virtual pet games for your mobile.
Read the full article: The 5 Best Farming Games on Android and iOS
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