10 Soulless Video Games That Are Just Slot-Machines

9. Hay Day

One of the sneaky little tricks in the freemium developer's tool box is to create a scenario where the user is hoodwinked into believing that the game can be genuinely enjoyable without spending a penny. In this regard Supercell's Hay Day excels to the point where people may even start to think that they are taking advantage of the developers' supposedly generous nature. For a while. This is true deceit in the most wicked fashion, draped in Farmville-esque gameplay - and that's using the term "gameplay" very loosely. While it is entirely possible to ponce around in the corn fields without dishing out real money, it soon becomes an exercise in excessive grind, a miserable world where sheep take half a real-time day to grow a shear-able woolly jumper and the feed mills can't possibly spit out bags of swill fast enough to satiate your piggies' desires. Hay Day wastes no opportunity to prompt the gamer to tear through the in-game diamond super-currency - when it takes 24 hours to build a bleedin' donkey shed, it's terribly tempting to dip into that savings account to hurry things along - and then, once you run out, is quick to offer amazing specials on big bags of virtual diamonds for distinctly non-virtual money. It would be more fun to simply wander out into the real countryside to be ravaged by a particularly boisterous bull, and at least that would be free.