A sublime tile-matching mobile puzzler that is as much a delight to experience as it is to play. Interesting progression and depth and mystery in its mechanics. Greatly recommended.

What does it want from me?

Well, this is just excellent. Sharing Race the Sun's developer, perhaps Evergarden simply caught me at my most vulnerable to relaxed mobile tile-matching puzzling. A mid-gaming crisis between titles, perhaps - but this is my jam, bread and butter. I love Evergarden.

Comprised of two halves, the central tile-matching of the 'garden' and a semigame on the outer rim, it's initially disappointing to find out that the arrows take you to unlockables rather than further gardens. Thankfully, the exploration is pleasing in itself, giving use to your bounty of gems in completing patterns on monoliths. These become puzzles in themselves later on, as barriers will make you have to work out the orientation of the placement. Harder than it sounds - enough that a hint system senses your confoundment and leaps to the rescue if need be. Completion of these puzzles either rewards you with progression down the rabbit hole of its forests or the play of a new vinyl on a record player that will grant you a new power for the main stage. These summonable manipulations make gaining gems and higher scores that much easier as you go. There's a peculiar point and click spirit to it, with gems, patterns, crystals, etc hidden in the environment and requiring seeking out and placing in an inventory. Alongside familial letters and monoliths with philosophical musings, it does well to expand its world beyond the central game. It feels like whatever is at the end of the tunnel is well worth pursuing to the end.

Here lies the last blade of glass.

The main stage is dedicated to the tile-matching - gardening of a sort. Without a tutorial, the mechanics are simply learnt by doing. It helps contribute to the feel of mystery upheld in the metagame. I shall only spoil the very basics.

A curious cat-deer creature looks on as an initial random assortment of different levelled plants spawn onto the tiles. Matching like to like produces one of the next level of flower on whatever tile you combine them onto and any flower can spread a seed to an adjacent tile. If you use up one of your ten turns to pass time, seeds become lowest level flowers - important in creating opportunity across the board. The creature throughout communicates desired patterns in flowers via thought bubbles. These are the usually the thing you'll chase, since completion grants you placeable flowers and it generally just pushes you in the right direction. The general aim is two-fold - to chase a high score through forming as many high-level flowers as possible and creating monoliths for gems. Combining two of the highest level flowers will spawn a monolith that grants a gem and can act as a wildcard tile for the patterns. Multiple monoliths can have explorable effects! It's not a mindless press-fest, but a considered, tactical slow-march to the most optimal game you can produce. Games last for an ideal length of perhaps 15-20 mins. Ideal for short-burst gaming.

The aforementioned vinyls have a number of unique, limited-use effects from calling a falcon to remove flower destroying pests, uproot a flower to place it elsewhere, upgrade an area of flowers, etc , etc. If I had one criticism about them, it's that the latter two I mentioned seem undoubtedly the most useful. I haven't unlocked all of them, granted, but the more seed-propagation focused ones and even the single-use wildcard one just can't compare to spontaneously levelling up so many tiles at once and being able to shift flowers three times. It's the difference between getting monoliths or not and being able to fulfil pattern requirements or not, for sure.

It would certainly be easy to punish this one of thoughtcrime.

'So what?' you might say. As solid as Evergarden is mechanically in its genre, important to understand my enthusiasm I think, is the contribution of the sublime presentation with its vivid pink hues and falling autumnal leaves, the excellent audio feedback with specific percussion bar sounds for combinations and the relaxing ambience of the soothing flutes and bird chitter. It's the kind of iPhone game polish that is instantly recognisable. It's an utter joy to experience as much as play.

The interaction between the sidegame progression and the central action could be better. As has been rightly pointed out, the leaderboards aren't categorized - it's just one list. Usually this is a good thing in making it actually meaningful, but in this case, the further you've progressed, the more vinyls you will have collected that could tip the balance of a game. My two favourite vinyls are actually among the first, so this is unlikely to be dramatic, but fundamentally it's not an equal playing field. Additionally, completion of the story content offers a daily puzzle. If that has a leaderboard, I don't know how many people will have unlocked it to set a standard.

Strictly speaking, aside from bringing new vinyls into the mix, the gameplay loop remains exactly the same. The explorations out are just a little sweetener. I think it's a testament to how solid, and moreover, relaxing the experience is that what should feel overly repetitive doesn't feel even close to a dealbreaker. This really is mobile gaming and light puzzling at its best.