Gardenscapes is a popular free-to-play mobile game by Playrix. This game is available for mobile devices and is downloadable from Google Play or Apple Store.
1. What Gardenscapes is About
- Game genre: free to play puzzle game
- Network connection: required
- Platforms: Mobile Android, iOS
- Age ratings: 3+
This game reminds me of the famous game title Candy Crush. Besides the fruit-swiping game style, there is a much lovely storyline developed through addictive tasks. In Gardenscapes, you will have a garden in which you’d love to care and make into a colorful dreamland that everybody wishes to be in.
Ah yes, and you are not alone in your mansion. At least Austin – your talkative butler – will be around to tell you exactly what you have to do. If you love colorful games and garden works, this game is definitely for you!
2. The Tasks in Gardenscapes
You will be given common tasks to make a garden bloom with flowers, for example cleaning, burying leaves, rebuilding the spring, and so on. To finish these tasks, you need stars, which can be claimed from winning fruit puzzles.
Simply saying, in the fruit puzzle, the player swipes the adjacent fruits positions in order to form a line of at least three fruits horizontally or vertically.
More complex, the tasks in these puzzles are rather diverse. Several popular missions include:
- Collect certain types of fruits in a limited number of moves. For example, you should pick up 25 flowers and 40 pears in 24 moves. Time to time you may have helping items such as bombs or shovels to make the work easier.
- Get the Lemon Juice down. There will be for example 4 glasses of lemon juice on the puzzle. You will have to explode fruits and brings these glasses down to the bottom.
- Find garden gnomes. There are hidden gnomes below the fruits and you have to explode those fruits to escape (or catch) these gnomes.
- Remove the acorns. The acorns will be removed when there is a match that happens next to them.
And so on. Usually, a puzzle consists of several duties at the same time. Also, sometimes the context might be different to provide more excitement.
For example, there is a dog training mission that consists of 3 levels. If you fail in any of the levels, you have to come back from level 1!
Luckily this evil rule is not applied to all game. The screenshot below was taken from level 1 – “Lead the pup” from the dog training series.
If you cannot complete the tasks in the given moves, you have to pay gold coins to add 5 more moves. If you don’t have enough coins to add moves, you have to restart the puzzle and lose one life (the heart).
You have to temporarily stop playing when you run out of lives. However, you will have a new Life every 20 minutes.
Boosters: bombs, blasts, shovels, and rainbows
The rainbow blast booster helps a player to remove items of the same type at once.The tasks in Gardenscapes will slowly become unbelievably hard if you don’t have the support of these boosters. You can buy them before the game if you have enough gold coin. Sometimes they even come as a prize for your recent impressive win.
These boosters also appear in the puzzle when you strike several consecutive explosions at a time. Actually, you should look for the match that triggers these boosters because it helps you to reach the target easier.
- Double Bomb booster: swipe it or double-tap it to trigger the explosion.
- Rainbow Blast booster: swipe it to a fruit that you want to remove totally from the gameplay at that time.
- Dynamite booster: similar to Double Bomb, but the area of the explosion is much bigger.
- Shovel booster: remove one tile.
Out of these boosters mentioned, in the gameplay, there are also different types of bombs and dynamites appear time to time when you strike several nice-looking explosions, for example, the TNT Barrels or Firecrackers.
Firecrackers
Firecrackers have the least explosion power in this game. You can easily make it by matching four of the same fruit type. Once triggered, firecrackers will blow everything inside a one-tile span on the same column and row that the it was in.
Bombs
Bombs have a bit more power than firecrackers and also requires you more to create them.
To have bombs, you need to match five similar fruits. Once activated, it will remove all the fruits in a 2-tile span.
Dynamite
How to make a dynamite in Gardenscapes?
In Gardenscapes, dynamite is created when you match six pieces of the same fruit type.
To trigger this, you can either double tapping it or swapping it with another adjacent piece.
Once detonated, dynamite will clear all the elements within a three-tile radius.
TNT Barrels
TNT Barrels have god-charged powers and also incredibly difficult to make.
To have TNT Barrels, you have to match at least 7 fruits of the same type. The huge blasts from the barrels will make a massive destruction that blows away half of the game board. So it is recommended to use TNT Barrels in the middle of the gameplay so that you can remove the most number of pieces from the puzzle.
Tips for winning Gardenscapes
So each level will have its own specific tasks as mentioned above, but there is two basic rules to follow:
- Activate as much boosters and dynamites as you can
- Concentrate on the main task
The first one you probably know. The second one simply means: if you don’t have many moves left, concentrate on what the level asks.
If it requires to find Gnomes, look to reveal tiles where the Gnomes might be. Don’t try to create and explode dynamites from the other tiles which were already revealed.
If it requires to collect a number of firecrackers, don’t try to make bombs or dynamites.
How to use the Rainbow Blasts
What is a Rainbow Blast in Gardenscapes?
A Rainbow Blast in Gardenscapes belong to the Boosters/Powers Up group. In order to have it, you need to detonate a certain amount of explosion elements such as Bombs, Firecrackers, TNT Barrels. After each explosion, you will have a bit energy add up until the energy is full that the game will issue a Rainbow Blast.
Basically its functions are:
- Remove/collect all fruits of the same type on the gameplay when you swipe it to a certain fruit.
- If two Rainbow Blasts are placed next to each other, you can swipe it to each other and collect fruits on all the tiles simultaneously. WOW!
So in some cases it is extremely helpful:
- When the level requires you to collect a certain amount of a specific fruit, you can use Rainbow Blast to collect many of them at the same time.
- To clear the whole gameplay so that all the elements will be activated, for example Blocks, Bombs, Firecrackers, TNT Barrels, etc. In some cases you even have an extra Rainbow Blast after the first one do its job because it has collected enough bombs.
Some tips to use Rainbow Blasts effectively:
- Try to wait for a second Rainbow Blasts so you can get them next to each other and then you can clear the whole puzzle
- Speed up the pace of getting a Rainbow Blasts by triggering many explosives at the same time. If you have many bombs or firecrackers that are in each other’s effect range you can detonate all of them with one move.
Sometimes Rainbow Blast is the only hope you get to win the game, so use it carefully.
3. What You Will Love About Gardenscapes
Not sure if you will love Austin (I actually feel that he is quite annoying sometimes), but here are the things that I believe will definitely satisfy you:
The graphics and animation
The game’s graphics are truly amazing. There are lovely garden acres with colorful trees and premises. Additionally, the smooth movement animation of Austin and the puzzle tasks together with soft soundtrack bring about a relaxed feeling that you will enjoy after busy hours of working or studying.
The most enjoyable moment comes when you pass a level, there are fireworks and consecutive blows of bombs and blasts that make the winning celebration looks amazing!
The addictive tasks
If you are a fan of Candy Crush, you will understand how addictive these kind of tasks are. Additionally, the lovely graphics will engage you more with the game than you might think.
Additionally, Gardenscapes provides interesting puzzle maps. For example, one line in the puzzle map can be a river, which means that the order of the fruit will be 1 step to the left after you make any move. So, it is not a static map of fruits.
Overall, the tasks in Gardenscapes are lovely and challenging enough that you can spend many hours in.
Soundtracks
The background music is so relaxed that it will bring peace to your mind even before you realize.
So, let’s give the game a shot! If you have already played the game, please leave a comment to share your experience. We would love to hear from you!
4. Video on Gardenscapes Gameplay
5. Can I play Gardenscapes on PC?
Yes you can. Even though the games are originally designed for mobile devices, you can use a software called BlueStack which simulates the Android environment that you can install and play this amazing game.
In short
The game is suitable for kids and adults of all ages. Nice content, good music, and engaging and challenging tasks.
On the other side, I don’t really like Austin the Butler. Many times he made me lose gems because of some stupid reasons.
