Once played by millions in the early 2010s, Zombie Farm was reduced to legend many years ago upon its removal from the App Store. A brand-new "Reforged" remake breathes a second life into this fantastic time capsule from the heart of the mobile game revolution.
Originally released in February 2010 by The Play Forge, Zombie Farm was available to download on the iPhone and iPod Touch. By the end of the year, it was the top-grossing freemium app in the App Store.
The point of the game is simple: you are the caretaker of a farm which grows zombies, you then battle your neighbors with the zombies you grow, then you decorate your farm in the process. Obviously, there was in-game currency which you could buy with real money to speed up the process of growing the different types of zombies.
I remember playing the shit out of this game on my iPod touch in school, farming for brains instead of farming for knowledge from my teachers. I got all my friends hooked on it. I'm pretty sure it was the reason that iPods were banned in a few of my classes.
A Winning Formula
This game was a genius mash-up of two wildly popular aspects of Western online culture at the time:
1. It ripped off the gameplay style of Farmville.
Farmville was an idle management game available for play on Facebook. The gameplay consisted of planting crops, waiting for them to grow, harvesting and selling them, and decorating your farm with the proceeds. It was ridiculously addictive and played by millions of users at its peak. Believe it or not, Facebook used to be the shit for playing idler games like this, but that's an article for another time.
2. It embraced zombie-themed aesthetics.
The early 2010s saw an influx of zombie culture in the West. Releases like Zombieland, Warm Bodies, and The Walking Dead were the most-rented titles at the video store. Everybody I knew in my junior high was reading Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide. Our parents were reading Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. We were playing Left 4 Dead 2 and Call of Duty: Zombies in every household with a Xbox 360. Plants vs. Zombies (an obvious influence on the art style of Zombie Farm) was a major hit on the App Store a few years prior. This was the time for zombie media in America.
Period-Accurate Game Review
I could go on and on about this game and its idler genius, but I think you'd be better served by watching an "of-the-era" game review of Zombie Farm. Check out this genuine 2010 review from Classic Game Room to learn more about it:
Zombie Farm's Demise
Sound like an idler you'd want to check out? Well that's too damn bad; you can't install it anymore!
As is the case for most mobile games from this era, Zombie Farm is now removed from the Apple App Store. The original game was proceded by a 2.0 version, renamed to Zombie Farm 2, and released in 2012. The Play Forge also released spin-offs like Zombie Farm Battles and Zombie Farm Escape, none of which repeated the success of the original game. Zombie Farm 2 continued to receive updates until early 2015, then went offline sometime during 2017.
After this, the only way you could play this game was on an iPod Touch or iPhone made during this era. Additionally, that device would have to be running a specific version of iOS which could be jailbroken. I undertook this task a few years back and it was a complete pain in the ass. My wife graciously allowed me to jailbreak her old iPod Touch just to try and play this game, and I ended up not even playing it for very long.. the app constantly crashed because I had to install a modified version that would run offline!
I searched for a new alternative but there was nothing out there, aside from YouTube comments and online petitions demanding that the game be re-released. After my failed jailbreak escapade, I joined the Zombie Farm community Discord,which held promises of a remake that was allegedly in development. I muted all notifications except for announcements, and then I forgot about it all for a couple of years.. until today.
Play the Remake
As of today, you can now play Zombie Farm Reforged in your web browser! It's an unofficial remake of the original Zombie Farm game masterminded by Doctor Nerd and his staff over on the Zombie Farm Community Discord. It's still in a public beta, so expect more updates and bugfixes to the game in the near future. The devs have also stated that player data will be reset once the beta has concluded its testing period. Don't forget to report any bugs or exploits you might find to the development team in their Discord server.
I personally recommend shrinking your browser window down to mobile phone size for that authentic 2011 experience. Enjoy!
