Gardenscapes – Ep.1 – Fast-Paced And Skill-Based “Hidden Objects” Game
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Gardenscapes is a game originally released for Windows PCs in 2009. In it, the player is tasked to restore the garden of the mansion they inherithed from their grandfather, with the help of the butler Austin. To gather the necessary money, the player sells various objects found in the many rooms of the mansion. The gameplay is that of a “find the object” game, with bonuses given to speed and efficiency, making it a sort of skill-based game in which multiple replays and knowledge of the rooms layouts, are awarded with higher scores and more in-game money obtained per-level. A “relaxed mode” also exists for who wants to play without a timer.
The mobile version of the game was the center of some controversy about misleading mobile ads. The ads for the game showed a type of gameplay that was nothing like the final product (which instead resembled what can be defined as a “Match 3-Candy Crush clone”. This sparked some backlash for misleading advertisment and the ethics behind “bait and switch” methods. When accused, the developers said that “the game was free to play and therefore no one was charged for a falsely advertised product”. In the end, however, the Advertising Standards Authority decreed this practice to be unfair to the market and told the developers to change the game to reflect the advertised product.
(Source: myself and see links below)
Further reading:
Examples of misleasding ads: