Homescapes is a match-3 game in the style of Candy Crush that allows you to repair and furnish a house as you beat levels. Build the perfect mansion and help Austin overcome the challenges involved in refurbishing and maintaining his home.

Homescapes combines a standard Candy Crush-style match-3 game with a visual novel, offering you an incentive to continue to complete levels and unlock more of the story of Austin the Butler. While the match-3 gameplay is nearly identical to the gameplay found in competing games, the visual novel helps to differentiate Homescapes from other games. It’s a great game to pick up if you’re looking for another match-3 game to play while your other games are on cooldown.

Austin’s House

The main character of Homescapes is a balding butler named Austin. Austin is a competent, dedicated homemaker with the visual style of a Pixar character, complete with expressive eyebrows, a bushy mustache, and an asymmetrical smile. Throughout the game, his goal is to renovate his childhood home. As you complete levels of the match-3 game, you’ll be presented with a series of choices about how you can refurbish different rooms. Change colors, pick different styles, and make the mansion your own.

Match 3

Most of your gameplay in Homescapes is spent playing a Candy Crush-style match-3 game. This game is a near carbon copy of other games on the market. Each level requires you to remove a certain number of tiles of different colors from the board. Swipe on the board to switch the position of two tiles or tap on a powerup to remove lots of tiles at once. Whenever your actions cause tiles to match in groups of 3 or more, they’ll be removed from the board, making space for new tiles to fall in from the top. If you match groups of certain sizes or shapes, you’ll create a powerup, enabling you to quickly clear out huge areas of the board at once.

Misleading Ads

Homescapes’ marketing team has attempted to market Homescapes based on the differences between it and other match-3 games. For years, Playrix ran ads that showcased small mini-games that rarely pop up during Homescapes’ story. These minigames involve simple tasks or choices that allow Austin to solve his problems. You might be presented with bars that you can move to allow people or objects to move, be presented with the choice of two objects, or otherwise be given very simple choices in order to move towards a goal. These games are technically part of Homescapes, but they make up a very small minority of the gameplay. In 2020, a British regulatory body banned a number of these advertisements and warned Playrix about their misrepresentation of the game.

Limited Events

Like many other free mobile games, Homescapes keeps gameplay fresh with a series of rotating events and minigames. Events like Cake o’Clock, Flying High, Flint’s Adventure, and more occasionally arrive in the game, giving you the opportunity to earn in-game currency while taking a quick break from standard match-3. Homescapes has been out for years, meaning that developers have had a chance to refine and perfect these minigames and polish the game for all devices.

Homescapes can get pretty tricky, especially if you progress late into the game. Most modern match-3 style games will eventually get to a point where it’s difficult to beat a level without spending money or hoarding powerups. If you find yourself at this stage, here are a few tips you can use to give yourself an edge and hopefully crush the current level.

Focus On Your Goals

Each level in Homescapes has a set of defined objectives. While it can be tempting to spend your moves trying to clear out the board as much as possible, this isn’t always the best idea. Instead, try to think about your objectives before you move any tiles. If you need to clear out a bunch of purple tiles, you won’t get much for matching 3 yellows. If matching the yellows makes more purple tiles fall in a big group, however, or if it gives you a powerup, it might be the right choice.

Understanding Powerups

Later Homescapes stages will require you to use powerups carefully if you want to achieve success. Make sure you know the rules to make all of the on-field powerups, whether they’re bombs, rockets, or rainbow balls. Make these whenever you can, especially the rainbow ball. When you get really close to beating a level, consider using stockpiled resources to close things out. If you’re not super close, however, save your resources for later and just accept that you didn’t beat the level. There are always other match-3 games to play while you’re waiting for stuff to replenish!

A plethora of powerups

Are you a Homescapes master? Have you completed the house? What do you think about Austin’s relationship with his parents? Let us know in the comments below!