I’ve been playing HayDay since 2017. It’s a farming game: You can grow crops, make food items, take care of farm animals, manage stables, go fishing, serve customers in your town, take care of pets, or head into the valley to deliver goods. You can also play for prizes in derbies, but I don’t play that part of the game because I get too competitive with it and the next thing you know I’ve dumped $100 into the game to get diamonds to speed up my production.

Oops.

The thing I love most about this particular farm game is that you don’t sacrifice the animals when you get goods from them. For example, when you need bacon from your pigs, they put on shower caps and go into little individual saunas, then they slide out the bottom all skinny and you get the bacon. You feed them, and a few hours later they get fat again, so you put them back into their saunas.

The developers are Finnish, so of course there are saunas. And a fellow named Tom. If you know, you know. (But if you don’t know, whatever you do, do not Google “Tom of Finland” while you’re at work, please.)

HayDay has seasonal events, and of course Halloween is my favorite. Even if I haven’t played in months, I’ll come back for Halloween. The farm animals wear costumes, and the chickens’ pumpkin sweaters are the cutest thing ever.

You can also decorate your town and farm for the season. Here’s my sorry excuse for a cemetery in my town. It’s next to my gift shop, just in case you forgot to bring flowers for your loved ones and chickens who have shed their mortal coil. It’s also next to my beach café, but we won’t get into that.

I put up a pumpkin scarecrow at the farm, but you can see how effective it is.  It’s a pretty good bet that jack-o’-lantern is a bit fermented, judging by the expression on that one Crow’s face and how unfazed he is about the ghost coming up the stairs behind him.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some eggs to gather.