Gardenscapes
Playrix's match three game: earn stars, help Austin the butler restore a garden
First principle
Making a neglected place beautiful, bit by bit, is a deep satisfaction. Gardenscapes turns each match three level into one more repair in a garden, with Austin the butler and a story around it.
The needs it meets
- ProgressCore
- Seeing yourself get better: a level cleared, a rank gained, a skill learnt.
- Entertainment
- Passing time and unwinding, carried off by stories, music and video.
Why it wins
- Each level earns a star, and stars pay for jobs in the garden, fixing a fountain, placing a bench, choosing a gazebo's style, so you watch the place change.
- Austin, the neighbours and the pets carry a story that gives the puzzles a purpose; Playrix calls the narrative a very important part of the game.
- It is run as a service: a large live team keeps adding levels, areas and events, and ten years on it is still in the world's top ten by grossing.
- Growth also came from ads, at a price: in 2020 the UK advertising regulator banned its pin pulling ads for misrepresenting the gameplay.
What keeps it ahead
- Live operations
- Events, seasons and new levels without end.
- Paid growth
- Heavy ad spending to buy users, paid back by those who pay.
How it makes money
In app purchases
Free to play; players buy coins, boosters and extra moves when stuck, plus event offers, some with random items.
What a small team can take from it
The layer worth copying is cheap: let each level buy a visible change in a place the player cares about; one scene that fills in as levels are cleared is enough. Its ads are the warning: show a game you do not have and you invite complaints and bans.
This week
- World: top grossing games, number 7, in 10 of 10 countriesGermany Google Play 4 · France Google Play 7 · Germany App Store 9 · Brazil App Store 10 · France App Store 11 · UK Google Play 11
- World: top free games, number 31, in 6 of 10 countriesMexico App Store 5 · Indonesia App Store 6 · Brazil App Store 9 · Germany App Store 19 · France App Store 21 · US App Store 37
updated 29 October 2026
- Developer
- Playrix
- Category
- Game
- Stores
- App Store, Google Play
- First in a list
- 29 October 2026
Sources
This is our analysis and judgement, drafted by an AI agent from the store pages and public sources and read by a person before it went up. Every figure has a source; where there is none, we give no figure. Found a mistake? Write to [email protected].