How Did Playrix Choose the Basic Tiles for Gardenscapes?

The six basic Gardenscapes Tiles: Apple, Pear, Leaf, Blackberry, Flower, and Waterdrop

Apple, Pear, Leaf, Blackberry, Flower, and Waterdrop form a color system that helps players recognize and read Gardenscapes boards instantly.

Red, yellow, green, purple, pink, and blue. Ask a Gardenscapes player to name the basic Tiles, and they are far more likely to describe them by color than to say Apple, Pear, Leaf, Blackberry, Flower, and Waterdrop. That may be the most interesting thing about the six images players encounter across thousands of levels: after a while, we almost stop seeing them as objects and start reading them as colors.

The six basic Tiles in Gardenscapes have formed the foundation of the match-3 board since the game began. The question here is not what they do inside a level. It is why Playrix settled on these particular objects and how such a simple choice created a visual language that players recognize almost without thinking.

The 6 Basic Tiles

Tile	Color Players See	Shape
Apple	Red	Apple
Pear	Yellow	Pear
Leaf	Green	Leaf
Blackberry	Purple	Blackberry
Flower	Pink / Fuchsia	Flower
Waterdrop	Blue	Waterdrop

There is already something unusual about this list. These are not six fruits. There is an Apple, a Pear, and a Blackberry, but there is also a Leaf, a Flower, and a Waterdrop. Playrix does not appear to have been trying to create a complete set of fruit. Instead, it chose a group of objects that could all be easily associated with gardens and nature.

Playrix Explained the Basic Idea Back in 2016

Shortly after the mobile version of Gardenscapes was released, Playrix’s Tanja Evdokimenko was asked in an interview why players collect fruit in the match-3 levels while repairing and designing a garden outside them. The interviewer took the question one step further: if Austin is building things, why not have players collect bricks instead of apples and pears?

Her answer provides an important piece of the story. Evdokimenko explained that because Austin has a garden, a fruit theme was a natural choice. At the same time, she emphasized that making the elements visually appealing mattered more to the team than following the setting too rigidly.

This helps explain why the pieces do not need to be literal representations of what Austin is doing outside the level. Their main purpose is to work as match-3 pieces. Their connection to the garden gives them an identity, but it is not the only principle behind their design.

Gardenscapes Did Not Start From Scratch

The same interview reveals that the Gardenscapes we know today emerged from a major change in direction. Development of the mobile version had already progressed as a hidden-object game when Playrix experimented with combining the existing world of Gardenscapes with Fishdom’s match-3 gameplay.

The company said it used Fishdom’s match-3 component as a foundation, redesigned the graphical assets, and then changed the mechanics so Gardenscapes would not simply feel like a copy of Fishdom.

The new pieces therefore had to work within an already tested match-3 system while giving Gardenscapes its own distinct look. That is where the choice of colors and shapes becomes especially important.

Why Do Players Say “Red” Instead of “Apple”?

This may be the most revealing part. When two experienced players discuss a move, it sounds much more natural to say “drop the red one,” “I need yellow Tiles here,” or “if a green one falls, it will make a match” than to keep talking about apples, pears, and leaves.

The same thing happens when someone quickly scans a board. Players do not need to mentally translate every image into an object. Red is the red piece. Yellow is yellow. Green is green.

The associations become simple and immediate:

Red = Apple
Yellow = Pear
Green = Leaf
Purple = Blackberry
Pink = Flower
Blue = Waterdrop

That does not make the designs unnecessary. In fact, the opposite is true. The object and its color work together until recognition becomes almost automatic. Players can identify the pieces by color, outline, or both at the same time.

Playrix Has Talked About “Visual Harmony”

One year later, Alexander Shilyaev, who was then the Lead Game Designer responsible for the match-3 side of Gardenscapes, publicly presented the process the team used to create new Elements. He did not specifically explain why each of the six original Tiles was chosen, but he did reveal the principles Playrix used to judge how an object should look on the board.

In his presentation, he emphasized the importance of visual harmony. An Element does not exist in isolation. It appears among pieces, blockers, Power-ups, and other mechanics, so it has to work visually alongside everything around it.

The team made sure an object would not blend into the board because of its color, but also that it would not stand out too aggressively. Its scale and level of detail had to fit the surrounding objects as well. The same attention to color, scale, and detail can also be seen in the way Playrix approaches Gardenscapes level design.

The Six Tiles Differ in Both Color and Outline

If we set their names aside for a moment and focus only on their designs, the system becomes very clear.

The Apple is red and round. The Pear is yellow and narrows toward the top. The Leaf is green with a long, narrow outline. The Blackberry is purple and made up of several small rounded sections. The Flower is pink and has distinct petals. The Waterdrop is blue and has a completely different silhouette from all the others.

Players do not have to rely on color alone. Even during fast cascades, the shapes remain different enough for the board to be easy to read.

Why Not Bananas, Cherries, or Other Fruits?

There is no known public statement from Playrix saying that bananas, cherries, peaches, or watermelons were tested and rejected. Claiming that happened would be speculation, not a documented fact.

What we can consider is the problem that repeatedly adding similar fruits might create. A banana would almost inevitably compete for space in the Pear’s yellow color range. Cherries would sit close to the red Apple. A melon could fall somewhere between green and yellow, while a peach would occupy the warm shades between red and yellow.

That does not mean a skilled designer could not make them look different. It means Gardenscapes already had a system built around six very clear visual identities. Adding more basic pieces would need to serve a real purpose, not simply place more images on the board.

Color Is Not Decoration—It Is Gameplay

The importance of color becomes even clearer when we look at how other mechanics work. Playrix’s official support pages explain that Power-ups are created by matching four or more pieces of the same color. Colored Boxes also require matches made with pieces of the corresponding color.

A Tile’s color is not there simply to make it look attractive. It communicates information that is directly tied to the rules of the game.

That is why it matters that players eventually talk about “reds,” “yellows,” and “greens.” The game teaches them to recognize a color category first and, only when necessary, the object that represents it.

Why Don’t All Six Appear in Every Level?

Gardenscapes has six basic Tile identities, but an individual level does not have to use all of them in the same way. The number of available colors changes how the board behaves.

When fewer colors are present, identical pieces are more likely to land near one another and create matches, larger combinations, and cascades. When more colors are in play, those same opportunities can become less frequent.

Flowers are also a special case. Playrix explains that Flowerbeds can produce Flowers on random Tiles when the required actions are performed next to them. This shows that even a familiar basic piece can be used differently depending on the structure of the level.

As Elements Become More Complicated, the Basic Pieces Need to Stay Simple

Gardenscapes now contains far more mechanics than it did at launch. Multi-stage blockers, generators, special activation requirements, hidden second phases, and new objectives can all appear around the same simple colored pieces.

This growing complexity makes the consistency of the basic Tiles even more valuable. As newer Gardenscapes Elements become more complicated, players need at least one part of the board that does not require them to learn a new rule every time.

A player may not know what a new blocker does the first time it appears. But the red, yellow, green, purple, pink, and blue pieces are immediately familiar.

The Objects Eventually Fade Behind Their Colors

This may be the most successful part of Playrix’s choice. An Apple needs to look enough like an apple to belong in the game’s world. During gameplay, however, it also needs to stop being an “apple” and become simply “red.”

The same thing happens with the Pear. After thousands of moves, players no longer need to consciously identify the fruit. They see a yellow pattern. The Leaf becomes a green pattern. The Blackberry becomes a purple pattern.

This is very different from a complicated Element, where players must remember how many hits it requires, what it produces, or when it changes state. Basic pieces should not demand attention. They should leave players free to focus on the strategy of the level.

Do We Know Exactly Why Each Tile Was Chosen?

No. There is no public Playrix record stating, “We chose the Pear for yellow,” or “We chose the Blackberry for purple.” Presenting either statement as fact would go beyond the available evidence.

What we do know from people within the company is that the garden and fruit theme was considered a natural choice, that making the Elements visually appealing was important, and that Playrix paid close attention to visual harmony, color, scale, and the amount of detail in the objects placed on the board.

The final result fits those principles remarkably well: six distinct color identities, six different silhouettes, and a shared nature theme that connects them to the world of Gardenscapes.

This consistent visual language is one reason an experienced player can read the board before making the first move without having to analyze every basic piece individually.

Conclusion

Playrix did not simply need six attractive objects to fill the match-3 board. It needed pieces that visually belonged in a garden, looked different from one another, and could be recognized in a fraction of a second.

Apple, Pear, Leaf, Blackberry, Flower, and Waterdrop do exactly that. But their greatest success becomes clear when players almost stop using those names altogether.

After enough time with the game, the board no longer contains only apples, pears, and leaves. It contains reds, yellows, greens, purples, pinks, and blues. The designs give Gardenscapes its personality, but color is what players ultimately read.

That may be the clearest sign that the basic Tiles were chosen well: they are distinctive enough to be recognized instantly, yet simple enough that players never have to stop and think about what they represent while playing.