Product Description Create the perfect garden! Comb the rooms of a gorgeous mansion for hidden items and restore a once stunning garden to its former glory. Choose from tons of garden accessories to customize the garden to your taste. Become part of the city's community and compete in the "Best Garden" contest as your amusing and witty butler, Austin, is there to assist. Become an outdoor decor pro in this cutting hedge game!
Original and good replay valueMarch 1, 2010 Ratqueen(USA) 42 out of 43 found this review helpful
I usually don't buy hidden objects games because of their lack of replay value to me, but I really love this one.
The presentation is lovely. The story is that you inherited of your grandfather's house, and you're in charge of restoring its garden, and eventually to take part in a garderner's club contest. You will be visiting all of the house's rooms (15 in all) to sell the items hidden within them.
The game can be played timed or untimed. There are 3 different types of hints you can use: standard (and you'll get bonus money if you don't use those), as well as camera and thermometer hints that are hidden within the rooms (cameras show a flash of where the objects are located, while thermometers change your cursor from cold to hot as you move it across the scene).
You can serve up to 5 customers at once, for a total of 20 customers (objects) to find per room. The customers' faces appear on the left of the screen along with the name of the object they want to buy and how much they'll pay for it. Once you find the object, a pile of coins is displayed in place of that customer -- it's up to you to click the money to immediately get another customer, or wait until you finish serving one of the other customers. This way, you can control how many customers you're handling at once -- if they have to wait too long (I mean, really too long -- and this is independant of whether you selected timed or untimed mode) the amount of money they offer you for the object will slowly decrease.
Sometimes, customers will ask you to find a set of 2, 3 or 4 similar objects (for instances, 3 pairs of gloves). If you manage to click on all items in the set in quick succession, you'll get a bonus amount of money.
Every so often, you'll also receive letters from special customers asking you to sell them a set of 20 objects (for instance 20 coffee makers) hidden in a single room. Other times, you'll have to find a set of 20 objects hidden among several different rooms on top of the 20 standard hidden objects.
Also, on top of the objects you'll have to search for customers, a certain amount of loose coins are hidden within each scene. Don't miss them if you want the extra money.
What is really nice is that, not only does the list of objects you have to find changes everytime (that's the norm for HOGs), but also most of the items within the room (and the coins) will be moved around! So if you found that umbrella next to the chair last time, it might be a different size and in a completely different place next time! This truly add enormous replay value to the game.
Another thing that adds replay value is the beautiful garden. Between each room search, you'll be brought back to your garden where you can use the money you earned to buy items. For each item, you'll be able to choose between 3 different styles which you can mix and match anyway you want. You can even change your mind later on (for a small fee) and pick another item or style, so you can potentially continue playing forever as you change your garden around.
I really have nothing bad to say about this game except, maybe, that' I'd want more of it. It would be great to have even more rooms, or an even bigger garden to customize. I'd definitely pay for an expansion to this game, or a version 2 maybe.
I've played GardenScapes on 3 different computers -- on XP and Vista 32-bit, and currently playing it on Windows 7 64-bit. Works fine on all 3 operating systems. No problem at all.
Delightful! Unforgettable! More, please!March 3, 2010 John Boyd(Columbus, OH) 16 out of 17 found this review helpful
Ratqueen's review is SPOT ON and very thorough, and I would only add that this visually attractive, addictive game also comes with a free screensaver that follows the progress of your garden, with all of the birds, butterflies, sounds and even periodic rain (all customizable in the game menu.)
The music in the different rooms is REALLY good, and I find myself jamming to some of the songs in my head from time-to-time.
A Perfect game of this type and a very cool, personalized screensaver. What more can you ask for?...
More of the same, please!
Funnist Game Ever!March 5, 2010 tOaStEe(New Hampshire) 11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I could sit and play this game for months, constantly. So far, I've been playing it after work for about 2 weeks straight. Once you finish the garden, you can continue to play the different rooms becuz the hidden objects move their positions in the room so it's never the same game twice, even if you've been to that same room 3 times in the same hour. I also like to sit and look at the garden, it's very peaceful. This game also has an additional pleasantry in that every once in a while it asks you to find "20 hairdryers" or "25 books" in the scene and you need to search for only those items. My mother told me about this game, and I'm so glad she did. It is really, really worth the $6.99. HP Games and AOL are actually charging $19.99 for this same game.
Worth it for the screen saver aloneApril 18, 2010 ringo(California) 5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This game has three things going for it -
- The backstory is engaging without being obnoxious (mostly presented by occasional letters in the mailbox, not endless reams of rescue-the-fairy-maiden dialog)
- The hidden object games are hard. (Where the hell is that umbrella? Wait, does one of those chair legs look funny? Arrgh!)
- The screensaver is marvelous.
The premise of the game is that you (and the resident butler) are rebuilding the house's garden in time for a garden show, and having an estate sale to pay for it. Solving the hidden object games finds things to sell to your waiting customers. No puzzles, though some of the HOGs are pretty puzzling themselves.
Simple premise, beautifully done. Not only does the screensaver show the garden (complete with weather, resident butterflies, a flowing fountain, and a swimming swan), it shows the butler puttering in the garden - painting the statues, feeding the birds, playing with the dog, and so on. There are hundreds of different easter eggs. Bored with the scenery? You can toss out the trees, fountain, statues, and so on, and buy different ones. But you'll have to earn enough to pay for them, so back to the game...
Sweet.
My new favorite in the hidden-object genreJune 11, 2010 Derek G(Redneck, South Carolina) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I rarely buy games at full price but after trying the demo I quickly realized this one is worth it. What sets Gardenscapes apart from other hidden object games is the unique way of leveling-up as you progress through the game. You start out with a dilapidated garden which needs restoration. To raise the money, you sell off items in your house to customers. The quicker you find items your customers need, the more money you make to use to buy better items for your garden. So not only are you racing against time to find all the items your customers need but you are racing to find items as quickly as possible in order to maximize your reward.
The garden environments you are able to create are quite varied with detailed high-resolution graphics. Your dog wanders through the garden making use of the various upgrades (strangely, a cat was frequently heard but never seen) while the butler maintains things as needed. Individual levels contain many items which shift slightly as you move your cursor past and special quests add variety by asking you to find twenty of a certain item such as trophies, golf balls or newspaper clippings. If you get stuck trying to find a particular item, you can request a hint which will show you the general area an item is hidden. You can also hunt for cameras and thermometers in each level to use as additional hints. The camera will flash the screen a bright white with only the items you need showing up ever so briefly. The thermometer allows you to pinpoint the items location by revealing your proximity by temperature. Finding hidden "question marks" replenishes any hints you may have used and gold pieces are sprinkled throughout each level which add to your total reward. Finally, one of the subtle things I like most about this game is it seemed the objects we are searching for are logically placed with very few tucked away in unreasonable locations. No more scissors hidden in trees, in other words.
Taken together, all of the individual flourishes make for a compelling and addicting adventure. It's a great game to play when guests are around as they can help you find things. The game also comes with a built-in screen saver so you can see your garden even when you're not playing. I estimate it took 20-25 hours to collect all of the items I needed to fully restore the garden and end the game. This brings me to my only gripes. First, you'll find yourself returning to the same 15 levels many times before you can finish the game. I wish a few were more included as it started to get repetitive toward the end. Secondly, while the ending was about what I expected, I would have loved to have been surprised with something unique and rewarding following completion. These are minor gripes, though. For the low casual-game price, this is a high quality title and it's highly recommended.
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