Randomness in Gardenscapes: How “Random” Is a Level, Really?

Austin and other Gardenscapes characters study a split match-3 board, with bad RNG on one side and cascading boosters on the other.

Explore how randomness, RNG, skill, cascades, booster placement, and level design work together in Gardenscapes.

In Gardenscapes, randomness does not simply mean luck. It describes the uncertainty that exists within a level that has otherwise been built around very specific rules.

The shape of the board, the objectives, the obstacles, the available moves, and the mechanics are all designed in advance. But within that framework, some things cannot be fully predicted or controlled: which pieces will fall after a match, whether an automatch will form, whether a cascade will begin, where a pre-level booster will appear, and how useful the opening board will ultimately be.

This is randomness in Gardenscapes: controlled uncertainty inside a designed puzzle.

Playrix Was Talking About Randomness as Early as 2017

Randomness is not a modern theory created by players. What players often describe as bad RNG is one way this uncertainty can show up during a level, and randomness itself has been part of the Gardenscapes design philosophy since the game’s early years.

In a presentation about Gardenscapes level design, Playrix’s Alexander Shilyaev explained that a level should have a specific “idea.” That idea could be based on a mechanic, a combination of mechanics, the geometry of the board, power-ups, or even random elements.

What makes this especially interesting is that Shilyaev did not describe randomness as a problem designers simply had to tolerate. He treated it as a design tool.

In one example, the player could make matches mainly in the center of the board while Fireflies were positioned in other areas. The player could directly influence the center, but progress elsewhere depended heavily on new drops, automatches, and cascades.

The player’s job, then, was not to control every event. It was to create favorable conditions and allow the board to develop from there.

Not Every Level Has the Same Amount of Randomness

Some levels begin in an almost completely controlled way. They may have a fixed layout, an obvious first move, or a specific match the designer expects the player to make.

Other boards contain larger open spaces, repeated drops, explosions, and automatches. In those levels, two attempts can develop very differently even if the player begins with similar moves.

We can think of it as a spectrum:

Predetermined opening ← less randomness — more randomness → cascades and continuous new drops

The designer determines how much uncertainty is useful for the experience the level is meant to create.

What Happens After You Make a Match?

The clearest form of randomness begins when pieces disappear and new pieces fall into the empty spaces.

From that point, several different outcomes are possible:

The new pieces may create no additional match.
An automatch may form.
One automatch may trigger another.
A power-up may be created.
A power-up may activate during a cascade.
An explosion may open a previously blocked part of the board.
A chain reaction may continue without the player making another move.

This explains why a difficult level can feel completely different from one attempt to the next.

On one attempt, a match may simply remove three pieces. On another, nearly the same move can trigger an automatch, create a Bomb, set off an explosion, and produce a cascade that clears a large part of the board.

This is also why players sometimes feel as if a level suddenly “opens up on its own.” The level itself may not have changed at all. A more favorable sequence of falling pieces may simply have produced a much better board.

The designed difficulty of the level remains the same, but the difficulty of an individual attempt can vary significantly.

Skill Still Matters

Randomness does not make Gardenscapes a game of pure luck.

A skilled player still decides which part of the board should be opened first, which obstacle matters most, when to activate a power-up, where to create space, and which moves are more likely to produce useful cascades.

The player cannot control everything that appears next, but they can create situations in which favorable outcomes become more valuable.

In other words, skill is not about eliminating randomness. It is about making better decisions within it.

Randomness Can Begin Before the First Move

One particularly important example is the placement of pre-level boosters.

Official Gardenscapes support states that boosters such as the Rainbow Blast and Two Bombs are placed in random positions on the field when a level begins.

That means the same booster can provide very different value from one attempt to another.

Bombs placed near important blockers may immediately help open the board. The same Bombs placed in an awkward area may accomplish very little.

The player decides whether to use the booster. The game determines where it appears.

That makes pre-level boosters a clear example of player decision combined with randomness.

Playrix Had to Design Around Random Booster Placement

Shilyaev explained that boards needed enough suitable positions for purchased bonuses to appear.

If a layout was too restricted, powerful bonuses could appear very close together and immediately destroy a large portion of the level.

So even when booster placement was random, the designer still had to anticipate the possible consequences of that randomness while building the board.

When Players Could Search for the Perfect Opening

For years, experienced Gardenscapes players had a powerful way to influence this system.

They could enter a level, inspect the starting board and booster positions, and leave before making the first move if they did not like what they saw.

The booster was not lost, and entering the level again could produce a different opening.

Players could repeat this until they found a much more favorable starting position, including situations where powerful boosters appeared next to each other and could be combined immediately.

It Was Essentially a Free RNG Reroll

Mechanically, this was more than a simple restart. The player was repeatedly rerolling the random opening.

The system might generate a bad opening, an average one, a good one, or an excellent one. Under the old system, the player did not have to accept the first result.

If an excellent layout theoretically appeared once every ten attempts, a player with unlimited free restarts could simply keep rerolling until it appeared.

At that point, randomness was no longer something the player had to accept. It could be filtered through repeated attempts until the desired result appeared.

The 2024 Change

Player discussions from 2021 and 2023 openly recommended restarting before the first move to improve booster placement.

The same strategy was still being discussed during 2024, but in September reports began appearing that free level restarts were being removed.

The change did not appear to reach every player at exactly the same time. Some reported that they could no longer leave without consequences, while others temporarily continued to experience the old behavior, suggesting a gradual rollout.

The practical result was simple:

You enter the level, see the opening, and that is the opening you have to play.

Why Might Free Restarts Have Been Removed?

There is no public Playrix statement explaining the decision in detail, so any explanation beyond the known change has to remain a theory.

Theory 1: The Growing Number of Elements

One possible explanation is that Gardenscapes became increasingly complex as more elements, generators, blockers, and special mechanics were introduced.

However, this alone is not especially convincing.

A single level uses only a limited selection of mechanics, and most blockers and special elements are already placed in fixed positions by the designer. The game does not need to rebuild the entire structure of a level every time the player enters it.

So the total number of elements in Gardenscapes does not, by itself, explain the removal of free restarts.

Theory 2: Openings Became More Important to Difficulty and Randomness

A stronger possibility is that the opening became an increasingly important part of how a level’s difficulty was designed.

As more mechanics interact with one another, the initial state of the board can have a greater influence on what happens next.

If a Hard or Super Hard level is designed around a particular difficulty target, allowing experienced players to reject every weak or average opening for free can significantly alter the level they actually experience.

It also weakens the purpose of random booster placement.

The intended system is essentially:

choose a booster → the game determines its position → play the result.

Unlimited free restarts changed that into:

choose a booster → inspect the result → reroll until satisfied.

Removing free restarts therefore restores the importance of the opening as part of the level rather than allowing players to select only the most favorable version of it.

Theory 3: Cleaner Difficulty Data

There is also an analytics argument.

Playrix explained in its earlier discussions of level design that it monitored difficulty curves and compared expected difficulty with actual player behavior.

If one player accepts the first opening while another rejects ten openings and plays only an exceptionally favorable one, those two players are not experiencing the same practical difficulty.

Removing free rerolls creates a cleaner relationship between entering a level and making a real attempt:

one level entry = one attempt with the opening that was generated.

Theory 4: The Booster Economy

There is also an economic consequence, although that does not prove economic motivation.

Under the old system, a badly positioned booster could effectively be rejected at no cost.

Under the newer system, the player must either continue with that placement or accept the consequences of leaving.

This objectively makes poor booster placement more costly to the player.

But the effect of a change is not the same as proof of why the change was made. Without an official explanation from Playrix, it would be speculation to claim that monetization was the sole reason.

Randomness Does Not Prove DDA

Randomness should also not be confused with the theory that the game decides when a specific player is allowed to win.

The fact that two attempts can produce dramatically different cascades does not, by itself, prove that Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment changes the pieces after a certain number of losses.

A match-3 system with continuous drops can naturally produce major variations between attempts.

A level can feel almost impossible several times in a row and then suddenly produce an excellent cascade without requiring us to assume that the algorithm deliberately decided to help the player.

Without official information about the current piece-generation algorithm, there is no solid basis for going further than that.

Randomness Is Also Part of the Emotional Experience

Randomness does more than affect difficulty. It also shapes how a level feels.

There is suspense as you wait to see what falls next.

There is surprise when a small match turns into a major cascade.

There is relief when an automatch clears exactly the last obstacle you needed.

There is frustration when the board produces nothing useful.

And there is that unmistakable moment when a chain reaction begins and the board suddenly seems to play itself.

This fits the design philosophy Shilyaev described. The goal is not simply to build a mathematical puzzle. It is to create an experience in which skill and luck interact instead of operating as complete opposites.

What Randomness Really Means in Gardenscapes

Randomness is not the opposite of Gardenscapes level design.

It is one of the tools used to create it.

A designer controls the board, the objectives, the obstacles, and the mechanics, but can also decide how much room to leave for unpredictable drops, automatches, cascades, and booster placement.

That is why asking whether Gardenscapes is “skill or luck” oversimplifies what is really happening.

It is a game where player skill operates within a system of controlled randomness.

And one of the most significant changes in recent years was not the disappearance of randomness. It was the loss of one of the strongest tools experienced players once had for manipulating it before making their first move.

Sources

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