Barnyard: 2006
Developer: Halfbrick Studios Pty Ltd.
Genre: Action

Barnyard is based on the animated movie of the same name. It is set on a farm where all animals can talk and walk, but only when no humans are around. The player takes the role of a new arrival, either a male or female cow, who has to finds its place inside the community. While the basic gameplay mechanics are almost identical to the console version, many aspects are simplified, e.g. the overall size, the mini game complexity and the graphical presentation (top-down instead of behind-the-shoulder).

The basic gist is that the player walks around freely in the unlocked portions of the farm, talks to other animals with exclamation points on their head and solves fetch quests for them. While some of those quests are mandatory to progress the plot, others are side content and only serve to earn money in order to buy decorations for the night festivities (there is a day/night circle and the character automatically goes to sleep at 2 a.m.). When entering more dangerous areas of the farm, there are enemies which take away life energy when touched. They can either be avoided or fought by shooting milk at them (which involves rotating the character so the udder aims in the enemy’s direction).

The main character has three stats which can be improved during the course of the game: life energy, milk capacity and running speed. The latter is important because the cow can only run a short amount of time before running out of breath, but later there is a bicycle which helps moving around. Additionally there are a few optional mini games.