You’ve inherited a mansion and a garden but that garden needs a lot of work. Thankfully reliable and dependent butler Austin is here to helpYou’ve inherited a mansion and a garden but that garden needs a lot of work. Thankfully reliable and dependent butler Austin is here to help fix it up but he needs funds. Join Austin as you both sell items dotted around the house in order to raise enough funds to refurbish your garden. Spruce up the garden enough and you’ll get the opportunity to take part in a garden contest with the winner displayed on the front of the local newspaper. If you want fame you’d better tend to that garden!
Playrix Entertainment, the developer behind Gardenscapes and its sequels hold a special fame in the casual gaming industry. They are one of the few developers to brake out of the HOG genre’s niche audience and make it big thanks to their expanded port of this game; a freemium version via Android/iPad. The freemium version of Gardenscapes is a rather addictive match 3 puzzle game with the refurbishing aspect coming into play once the player has collected stars from completed puzzle levels. So well did Gardenscapes that Playrix then did a sequel called Homescapes about refurbishing a…erm…home. The original series focused on funds obtained through completing hidden object scenes and it’s the original series that lead the way to the cash cow Gardenscapes is now. Every room in the house becomes a hidden object scene where the player must find items for a Jumble Sale. Every character asks for an item and you have to fetch it so they can give you the money for it. You have a number of ways to find difficult objects either through actual hints dotted around a room to be collected, a thermostat that gets increasingly hot the closer you are to the required item in the list or a camera that briefly shows all the items isolated on screen. While the items are easy to find each person on your left has a patience meter and regardless of whether you have the game timed or relaxed will start to lose that patience the longer they have to wait for their items, which means less funds to collect afterwards. Some of the items you’re searching for to sell off are quite unusual and reminds the player of how absurd the HOG as a genre can be. I mean, why would someone want to be sold a random key laying around or an apple or even a light bulb??? Best not to think too much about it.
Once enough money has been collected you’re free to start redoing the garden and that’s where the fun part comes in. You get to design what you want and it’s all presented with a laidback, retro charm. Austin is the epitome of ‘old fashioned’, further emphasised with the classical piano and jazz music score. The game’s strength isn’t just the world created but the choices you make in redesigning your garden content ends up being a reflection of yourself not what the game automatically decides. Occasionally characters will ring up to ask you to find something but for the most part it’s searching the same rooms for objects to sell. It’s a repetitive game although not so much as generally HOGs suffer from. Austin gives you continuous updates on the garden contest he’s entered you into and considering the rooms are repeated a fair amount even the most skilled player will find a game with a good length. If you leave the game and come back the next day Austin even mentions your disappearance!
From humble beginnings Gardenscapes is a fairly enjoyable game. At the time of release it was a fairly new concept in merging the garden sim with a HOG and what really makes the game special is spending time in the company of that optimistic if forgetful butler Austin in a friendly, relaxed world full of nostalgia. If this doesn’t make it a casual game in its truest form nothing will.… Expand
