I’m not usually in the business of reviewing mobile games, but it’s not everyday that the mindless puzzle game you download to kill time turns out to have an intricate narrative chock-full of classic Gothic tropes. Lily’s Garden, created by Tactile Games, is a match-three style puzzle game not unlike Candy Crush that is available from Google Play and the Apple App Store. But while I initially sought out the game for its fairly mindless gameplay, its real appeal lies in between the levels of complicated formations of colored blocks.
As you play through Lily’s Garden, each level of the puzzle game earns you stars, which you can then spend to progress through the narrative. The narrative begins with the protagonist Lily Roberts unexpectedly inheriting the estate of the great aunt who raised her. However, this inheritance is conditional: Lily must restore the overgrown and abandoned grounds of Great Aunt Mary’s extensive property within thirty days or else lose the estate and the great fortune that comes with it. While several works of Gothic literature feature a family member’s will with similarly specific stipulations—and the trope is even more common in the spinoff genre of Gothic romance—Lily’s Garden also employs the more general Gothic trope of a contested inheritance. Apart from the precarities of the will, Lily’s claim to the estate is threatened by two men who are Gothic character archetypes in themselves. The first is Cousin Larry, a distant relation who pretends to have an equal claim to Aunt Mary’s estate. However, as Lily investigates Larry’s claims she uncovers some family secrets that suggest Larry may not be being honest about his true identity. The other antagonist is a shadowy figure known as “Mr. Rich,” a scheming villain who attempts to use both money and manipulation to get Lily to sign the property over to him. Surrounded on all sides by would-be usurpers, Lily has to fight to secure her rightful ownership of her family’s estate.
Once you finish the initial thirty-day plot arc, the narrative of Lily’s Garden gets even more Gothic. Lily learns that she’s inherited not only her great aunt’s house, but also the adjacent LaRosa Manor—the ancestral home of her great uncle Arthur. This crumbling mansion is rumored to be haunted, an impression heightened by the deeply unsettling portrait of the family matriarch, Maddalena LaRosa, that hangs above the mantle. Lily and her friends are frightened by apparent sightings of Maddalena’s ghost in an upper-floor window, though ultimately the existence of the supernatural is left ambiguous. While her dead ancestors may or may not be spiritually present, they are certainly physically present—their remains lay in the family crypt, which no ancient ancestral home would be complete without! As Lily explores and rebuilds more and more of the estate, she finds that her family has not only a seemingly limitless estate—with new outbuildings and themed gardens constantly being added to the map—but also an endless supply of family secrets.
Of course, rather than lingering in this Gothic atmosphere, the narrative of Lily’s Garden is continually propelled in an uplifting direction as Lily unleashes her landscaping and redecorating powers to transform the obscured and foreboding property into a happy and colorful home. She seems to have a similar ability to bring her shrouded family history into the light and even to transform her enemies into friends.
Have you played Lily’s Garden? Do you have any other Gothic mobile games to recommend? Let me know in the comments!