If you're spending a lot of money you're playing way too much
by Ash sidedness
I'd actually give 4 1/2 but whatever.. so let me start by saying the game is great. At least to me it is and I never really liked these kind of matching things in a row type games. It's challenging, fun and visually quite nice. I agree with some of the reviews that state you gotta do a lot for a little in return. Sometimes there will be a task that requires you to hire some help and one task will be to find someone to call for help and the next task will be to actually make the phone call. That's a little annoying to look forward to if you want to continue playing.
A lot of people complain about it being expensive but these must be people that A. Have no self control.
B. Probably are playing way more than they should be.
Okay, I get that games can be addicting and I myself have sat for hours playing games I've thoroughly enjoyed but if you find yourself spending money on this daily or to a point that you're complaining about it, you probably don't have the financial comfort to be spending money on phone games and I suggest taking a break and going for a walk. Or download another game to play while you wait for more lives.
Overall fun game and my only suggestion is to give out some goodies(bombs, shovel, rainbow thing) a tiny bit more often or at least make that daily wheel spin thing have better prizes.
Fun and Productive
by Oogie 81
This is by far my favorite game and has been for a very long time (I’m legit addicted). It is exciting to build such amazing gardens when in real life I am unwittingly the grim reaper of foliage, unable to keep a simple house plant alive despite my best efforts. I also have a proclivity towards cleanliness and being in control (plants aren’t the only things running away from me screaming). Cleaning up the garden and decorating it the way I want helps quell my OCD (free and sometimes $9.99 therapy) and makes me feel productive while I am escaping life (being super lazy) for a bit (usually hours) to play this game. I think the levels are a good mix of difficulty (except when I can’t beat one and am yelling at my IPad) and the game makers appear to listen (not to me yelling at my IPad) and make positive changes when something is not favorable. The daily prize wheel is nice, but for as much as I play I have only hit the jackpot two times and I find these odds a little suspect (omg I need to get a life). The only other complaint I have are the number of stars sometimes needed to complete a task (if only I ran the world...). But let’s be real, these are silly frustrations in the grand scheme of life. This game will continue to be my guilty pleasure (relaxing anti-social personality skill strengthening module) for a long time.
Fun but annoying
by whäle
This game is definitely addicting and can be fun, but also very frustrating at times. As others have mentioned the levels get progressively harder as you go on. You can end up wasting lots of power ups and coins trying to beat a level and still lose. Also the rewards stay pretty much the same so you’re basically always getting diminishing returns as you play.
But by far the most annoying thing for me is the multi-step process needed to restart a level when you lose or decide to quit. Whenever there is any kind of challenge active where you have to collect things or earn rewards, there is always a pop up where Austin asks if you are ABSOLUTELY SURE you want to lose your rewards/collected items from that level, trying to get you to use your coins and continue. Yes Austin, I am 100% sure I would rather give up these 15 apples I matched than waste my coins on 5 more useless moves that will bring me no where close to winning the level.
Of course there is no option to disable these popups, probably because they are just a poorly disguised attempt to get people to spend money on coins. This used to be less of a problem because there weren’t always challenges going on so usually there would be no popup. Now the challenges are constant, and I have to mash the end level button multiple times to blow through Austin’s unhelpful advice every single time I lose or quit.
Addicting, But Frustrating
by GoldenTree12
First of all, I want to say that I love absolutely love this game! It is very well advertised, and it is such good quality. I really enjoy the storyline and the beautiful garden. However, I do have a couple of problems with this game.
During the first couple of days I easily went through and played the levels. However, when I hit the 60’s it got hard. Now, I’m not complaining about the difficulty level, but there is a frustrating cycle when you just can’t complete a level. If you don’t have enough coins to buy more moves, then you don’t have enough coins to buy a power up. You can spin the wheel every day to win prizes, but you rarely get something you can use to win that level. Also, if you can’t when the levels and you don’t get any stars, and if you don’t get any stores and you can’t complete any of the challenges and win coins! You see where I’m going with this?It’s almost like the game is forcing you to purchase coins if you need an extra boost I a level.😕
Even after all this, I still love this game and gave it four stars for its originality and fun! I do ask that there be an easier way to get coins, though, like on Homescapes when you check in consecutively, you get coin rewards. I think that would be a great addition to Gardenscapes! Thank you to all the creators of this game, you guys are awesome!
Awesome game
by Lilpeach29
I’ve been playing this game for over a year, maybe even two, and i love it. I wanted to write a review to be clear that the game is not impossible without spending money, not even close. I’m on level 1300 or so and have never spent a dime. You do have to be prepared to be patient and play some levels many times until you win. I guess if you’re looking for it to be really easy and to just soar through the levels, this game might not be for you, but i love that it’s realistically challenging. Most importantly, in my opinion, is this is a free game WITHOUT ads!! I’m not sure how they manage to put out a game this engaging and fun without ads, but maybe they could teach other companies... You do need power ups once in a while, BUT, you can easily get them for free by playing the optional challenges they give you, and by logging in each day to collect your free daily prize.
My suggestion to developers, if you read this, is to fix up the rockets. They explode things that make no sense, like pieces that have already disappeared, or prioritizing dropping lemonade glasses rather than things that make way more sense. Also, if someone uses a power up on a level, it would be nice if it didn’t enter by interfering with other matches that are pre-setup for that round.
Fun with a cute story
by CyndyML
I really like these games, and this one has the perfect level of difficulty for me. You absolutely do not have to spend money on this game, but I did after I played it quite a bit. I just felt that they had given me so much enjoyment that I morally owed them for the game.
Some people have complained about the story line. I find it fun. I tend to save up my stars, and then play a bunch of them at one time, but I don’t start a new day until I want to refill my lives.
Edit: it’s months later, and I still love this game. I buy coins a couple times a year when they are on a super sale, but only because I want to support the game designers because it’s a terrific game. (I have over 70,000 coins, so it really is just because I feel they should get paid for their effort!) The only two things I’d change: (1) lower the chances of getting a life on the wheel - I have over a hundred in my mailbox, and bombs, etc. are so much more useful. (2) toss some timed games into the higher games because they’re more fun than muddy fruit or purple vines. Also, I really appreciate that if I have the game sound off, there aren’t noisy pop-up ads. I end up playing at night if I have insomnia, and this is one of the games I can play without fear of waking my husband! Love this game!
Please start telling the truth in your ads
by PvtSnuffy
I downloaded this game thinking the complete opposite of what the game is actually about. This game is about rebuilding the garden of his childhood. You complete furniture with collecting starts. You collect these starts from a mini game very similar to candy crush but it’s related to the garden. But let’s get to the point. I downloaded this game from an ad. There are many ads saying that you either, save him and the girl from Antarctica, or you have to save the house with out failing, or save the garden without getting a fail. All the ads make the person fail but making it really easy to chose the correct answers. Me and my friend decided to try this game for my little sister to play. Without even thinking how some of the ads don’t even go with the point of the game. Later on it was downloaded and my sister had no idea what to do. I then knew that the ads where straight clickbait so this game could grown even more! These ads are even used in their game Home Scapes. Other than the ads clickbaited probably many people, this game gets a 3 star. Not a 4 or a 5 because of how difficult the levels are to get starts, it can take days to finish some. At the start it was easy but then the challenge came where I was stuck on for many many days! Any way that my review. Thank you for reading and I hope you can stop the clickbait, thanks!
The Nicest Game Ever
by Kellyfireangel
This is, seriously, the "nicest" game on the internet. Austin is like your super-supportive friend, who's so positive it's almost creepy, but you gotta love him, because he's just so nice. I started playing this game as part of an offer to earn gold in another game I play, and I've been a daily player ever since. The match-3 levels are pretty addictive and challenging, and they're always changing and adding new features, so it stays fresh and interesting. At the same time, you're fixing up the gardens and having adventures with Austin. All the neighbors you meet are fun characters, with interesting backstories. It's all gorgeously rendered, and totally bug-free. You can play offline. Fun little events happen pretty frequently. Best of all, there's practically ZERO ad-presence... you have the option of watching videos for coins from time to time, but ads are never shoved in your face. I think this game is designed to appeal to older adults-- hence, the 80's-supermarket-style music, but I really think anyone can have fun with it. I am seriously just impressed with the quality of it. The only things I'd potentially change about this one: faster recharge on lives, different music options, and more customization options for the garden decor. But it's serously pretty great as it is.
Fun, but the game cheats to try to get your money
by living.lucid
I’ve been playing this for many months now, and while I enjoy the premise and the gameplay, I found that the game purposely tries to prevent me leveling up. I currently have 23 extra lives (probably the 5th or 6th time I’ve accumulated this amount) that I got from the daily spin. I purposely press the stop button on different parts of the wheel, and yet I STILL get extra lives every time. It’s totally fixed. I’ve found myself stuck on levels for weeks because what I really need is a power up to give me the edge to pass the level, but I’m buried alive in extra lives instead.
Additionally, I’ve found that if I start blowing through levels too quickly, the game will purposely make my lose a level by refusing to drop the needed shape. I’ve had more than twelve moves left to me after gathering all the gnomes or the lemonade but one, and despite making matches right beneath where I need things to be rearranged, the game will just keep dropping useless shapes for all of my 12 moves and purposely prevent me from winning. I’ve noticed that the only way to combat this programmed cheating is to just stop playing. I won’t open the app for days and then suddenly the game provides everything I need to pass a level I’d been stuck on for 9 days. It’s very frustrating, and there have been several times I’ve considered just deleting it.
I love it and it’s fun to play but....
by Mimibfly6622
First off, I just want to say that I absolutely love this game. I love the aspect of decorating the home, the plot, all of that. The only thing that gripes me about it is that, the game is so transparent in the fact that they make like 2 or 3 levels in a row super easy like passing it in 1 or 2 lives and then they’ll give you a level that you can’t pass for a week, like making it impossible, and you can only pass if you use the power ups or use the coins for more turns. After about a week and the game notices that you don’t use any of it, they make the level on probably the 9th day SUPER easy to pass and you’ll move on. I’ve noticed this about 6 or 7 times in the game and I’m upper 100 levels. Now to be fair, A LOT of puzzle games are like this. Homescapes is just visually appealing enough to make it bearable. The reason why I don’t mind it so much is because I play it a lot on my free time or when I’m bored so playing it, knowing I’m going to lose a level because they’ll make me wait to see if I use the power ups, is killing time for me until I actually pass it. Besides all of that, if you don’t like games that have that same interface and strategy with its players then this game is probably not for you, but it is a very well looking game with load of fun puzzles to play from!
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