Garden Bloom

How to play Garden Bloom

• Swap two adjacent flowers to line up three or more.
• Matched flowers clear and the board falls to fill the gap.
• A swap that makes no match is not allowed.
• Each level has a goal and a limit on moves or time.
• Reach the goal within the limit to move on.

Special flowers

Three is the minimum match and the least valuable one. Four in a line makes a piece that clears a whole row or column. Five, or a match bent into an L or a T, makes something stronger.

Two specials swapped into one another are the biggest single effect in the game, and the late levels are built assuming you will find them.

Tips and strategy

Look down

The single most useful habit in every match three ever made: match near the bottom of the board. Everything above a clear falls into it, which creates new matches you did not have to find. Match near the top and nothing at all happens beyond the three tiles you removed.

One extra swap

Before taking a match of three, check whether moving one piece first would turn it into four. It usually would, it usually costs one move, and the special piece it makes is worth several.

Read what the level wants

• Score goals reward cascades wherever they happen.
• Collection goals count one flower, and matches that ignore it are close to wasted moves.
• Obstacle goals want particular squares cleared, so work those squares even when better matches exist elsewhere.

Endgame

Count your remaining moves against what the goal still needs. Once the arithmetic says small matches will not get there, stop playing safe and start hunting for the combination, because a level lost by two is the same as a level lost by twenty.

Common errors

• Taking the first match you spot.
• Saving special pieces so carefully that the level ends with them still on the board.
• Playing fast when the limit is moves rather than time. Speed is only worth something against a clock.