Gardenscapes

Gardenscapes has all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a mobile match-three puzzle game, but it sells itself on its charm and style. What really ties things together is the ongoing notion of building your garden. Winning - and more importantly, excelling - at the puzzles is the best way to upgrade your garden, and there's something distinctly satisfying about watching your estate grow from a dilapidated jungle into a lavish garden.

The formula at work here is a well-trodden but effective one. While the core experience simply involves matching three gems of the same color, there's a higher level of strategy involved as well. Real success means matching four or more and creating increasingly more sophisticated power-ups. With the ability to clear straight lines or larger blocks of gems, these power-ups like dynamite and rockets can completely change the state of the board.

That's especially true when you take into account the relative complexity of the puzzle objectives. While the basic formula of destroying moves in as few moves as possible remains steady throughout the vast majority of your time with Gardenscapes, there are a ton of obstacles to add some substantive new challenges. New modes are added on a semi-regular basis, and seasonal events continue to keep things fresh.

Gardenscapes isn't a revolutionary take on the match-three formula, but the production values are high. More excitingly, it's piled with years of content. That means not just new modes but also smaller things like quality of life improvements and more customization options for your garden yet. You could pick Gardenscapes up today and still be confident that you have enough to last you a lifetime.

Pros:

• Cute art with a charming story
• Nicely polished puzzle formula
• Constantly being updated

Cons:

• Doesn't reinvent the formula