Lilly's Flower Shop

Lilly's Flower Shop is a classic match-3 game with a colorful flowery theme and a mechanic of spending the coins you earn from completing levels on establishing and later expanding your flower shop business.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2942814860
On the scale of match-3 games, it's an ok one, with all the features you'd expect from the genre (power-ups, special tiles that break only when matches are made around them, bombs created through 4 or 5 matches etc.). It has cute graphics, albeit a tad old-style. The flowery icon set looks nice, but the fact that all tiles (including the special ones) have the same-ish green background and style makes them difficult to distinguish from each other.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2942814880
The levels are quite wide, allowing for plenty of 4 or 5 matches to be created. Currently only one difficulty option is available, although the fact that there is a power up that adds one extra move even though all the levels have unlimited amounts of moves could indicate that more difficulty options were / are planned.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2942814998
The game took around 2h for me, and I managed to gather the coins needed to buy all the available items (and thus finish the story) by completing less than 25 levels, although presumably there are much more than that. Some of them seemed to award a huge amount of coins (there could be some multiplier glitch for levels in which 4 matches and 5 matches are encountered very often) but aside from this and some minor grammar issues with the English translation, my gameplay was bug-free. Also a minor inconvenience was the fact that in some levels, the hud partially covers the first column of tiles on the left side of the gameplay area. For resolutions lower than mine (1920 x1080) this could be a real issue if those tiles are completely covered.

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Lilly's Flower Shop is a match-3 game developed by Graphium Studio and published by Denda Games. You take on the role of Lilly, who has always dreamed of owning a flower shop. She's given a wasteland, and she wants to clean it up and convert it into a beautiful flower store. Of course, Lilly may run into a few obstacles along the way, but they won't stop her from making her dream come true. That's the basic premise of the story.

As for the gameplay, Lilly's Flower Shop is primarily a match-3 game. There are 100 or more levels. The objective is to match 3 or more of the same items (which are flowers or water droplets) and to complete the level according to the specified goals. For example, you may be asked to clear a certain number of flowers, eliminate a few flower pots, and/or clear away dirt spots. Matching more than 3 of the same item results in a power-up on the board that you can use to help clear away items more efficiently. In addition, you'll get access to additional power-ups that can be activated after you unlock them. Also, as the main objective is for Lilly to build her own flower shop, you'll earn coins as you complete levels. Coins are used to purchase items in the shop that will help Lilly make her dream a reality. Although most of the items are cosmetic in nature, a few can unlock the additional power-ups that I mentioned earlier. At the time of this review, there are neither Steam achievements or Steam trading cards.

Now that I've gone over the story and gameplay, I'll move onto my critique. First, I liked the story. It's pretty simple but sweet, and I liked how optimistic Lilly is. Also, she's determined, as there are a couple of people who don't wish to see Lilly succeed. (There usually are villains in these kinds of stories, right? XD)

As for the gameplay, upon first starting up the game, I immediately noticed that the default language was in Spanish. Thus, I had to change my language option to English before I could proceed. After I did that, then I went into the settings to change my screen setting to windowed mode since I tend to play in that mode. However, I noticed that windowed mode looked almost the same as in full screen mode. (I noticed this same issue with one of the developer's other games.) I really wish that there were more screen options to accommodate players. After I got through all that, then I started to play the levels. There's a tutorial that explains how the game mechanics work and so forth, so that's very helpful. I found it especially useful when it came to explaining how the power-ups worked and how to clear away certain troublesome items in the levels. There was something unusual that I noticed as I played through the levels, though. I noticed that for every level, the number of moves is always set to unlimited mode. I believe this is relaxed mode. It's unusual since games like this usually have, at least, two or more game modes. (I ended up checking further on this, and I believe that there are supposed to be three game modes: relaxed, normal, and hard. However, the Steam version only has relaxed mode unless I wasn't able to find out how to change game modes.) Personally, I would have liked more of a challenge since I was able to purchase all of the items and complete Lilly's flower shop after completing 23 levels.

In regards to the art, I liked the style used here. The flowers especially are beautiful, and the colors feel vibrant without it being too much. Regarding the music, I found the soundtrack to be relaxing and soothing to listen to. It feels very chill to listen to the tracks as you play through the levels and such. There isn't much variety to them (only a couple of tracks, I think), but the music is still enjoyable.

Overall, would I recommend Lilly's Flower Shop? If you enjoy match-3 games that are on the simple side and don't mind the lack of challenge (assuming that you're fairly proficient with match-3 games, of course), then this is worth a look. It's a fun game to pass a bit of time, and I liked that there was a story and that I got to help Lilly build her flower shop. For the asking price, I'd recommend holding off for a bit of a sale. As this game may be a bit on the easy side for some players, you may not get as much gameplay time. It took me fewer than 2 hours to complete this game, but I'm fairly decent at match-3 games. (I don't play them as often as I should. XD) Still, it's worth getting, and it's fun to play. ^^

Flying free and writing reviews solely for The Introverted Gamer.

I had the original version of the game refunded, bought it again for $2 during a sale, after reading that some updates had been applied. Sorry, have to say is about all this game is worth. The flowers and soundtrack are nice, and the storyline is charming despite being hokey. You can combine powerups to get better effects, which is something I don't see with many PC M3 games; this seems to be more a mobile M3 game thing.

Otherwise, it looks like a very rough game needing a lot of refinement. The flower shop scene gets finished after playing merely 25% of the game, and the "end game" dialog inexplicably appears at this point, which might make you think that's all there is unless you have the curiosity to click the "Play" button again to get to the rest of the game. When I first started the game, all the texts were in a foreign language (also happened when I played the original version) and I had to "curious click" to figure out where the game options were in the main screen to change it. No windowed mode option. Play action is clunky slow. You can't see the flowerpots to remove in many levels without having to look extremely closely because they get "lost" against the busy background, and the brown tiles to clear simply "disappear" into the busy details. While I got a random mole or 2 here and there in the 100 levels, they weren't doing anything because they are only "active" in "hard mode", of which the game did not give me any choices to pick a difficulty mode when I started. In this version, it looks like the game is permanently stuck in "normal" mode which still gives you infinite moves. Oh, and the store page blurb about there being over 100 levels? No, there's just 100 and the game automatically takes you back to level 1 when you complete level 100.

On second thought, it's probably a good thing that "hard mode" (limited moves, active moles) isn't present, because the whole game is purely luck-based where running out of moves in a section happens constantly. Playing the later levels is a total grind with having to match elsewhere until something somehow happens to rearrange the pieces so you can get back to working in the desired location. Although you get a lot of powerups for making bigger matches, said powerups have to be triggered by matching again with the specific piece they have, which really ruins them IMO. Or else you have to get lucky enough to have 2 powerups land next to each other so you can fuse them. Some of the higher levels have tiles in completely inaccessible locations which require you to not only make powerups in just the right places, but then you have to get lucky with the tiles falling in around them to be able to set the powerups off.

[update] After the publisher posted the screenshots on how to completely erase all game save settings, I gave the game another go in hard mode. And as I'd suspected before, winning is often a matter of pure luck with getting powerups made in just the right locations. The levels with moles are actually not that much more annoying with multiplying critters (assuming you know how to use the powerups from bigger matches), but the levels where random blocked tiles are added every few seconds are seriously obnoxious. There are other bugs I came across in hard mode such as the game going back to the level just completed instead of progressing to the next one, or cascades not matching out tiles which obviously made three-in-a-row. Still gets a "no" from me.