We haven’t mentioned it in a while, partially because the device I used to play app games on died a quiet death a few months ago, but we easily become hooked onto those dumb and pointless matching games where an irritating story unfolds. Previously, we had explained Homescapes and Gardenscapes, and Erica had more recently mentioned playing Word Villas so that none of us has to. We constantly do good services for you all.

Well, not to brag, but now I have a new tablet, and a new game — “Lily’s Garden” — so I am here to once again talk about an app game for your edutainment.

Lily‘s Garden Is What Now?

Lily’s Garden is like probably a thousand other kinds of games of this genre. Protagonist inherits extravagant fixer-upper, and fixes ups, while also fixing upper their own mess of a life in a parallel life lesson metaphor. Friends are made, storylines are forced onto you, and comedy animals are tacked on too for some reason. Usually there is romance, miscommunication, and often a great deal of money on the line.

In this one, although I have only progressed about a hundred or so levels and one bonus holiday side-story, it seems like the gist is that Lily, a thirty-something, has a chance to inherit her Great Aunt’s estate, as long as she can fix up the gardens in a month. I think I am about two weeks in, and she is sprucing up the “Zen Garden.” The gardens aren’t as grand as Gardenscapes’ gardens, but at least so far there haven’t been any outrageous racist Asian stereotypes peppered in here and there. In Gardenscapes, a Zen Garden would have included the feature of a Japanese-named levitating Shaolin monk who has nothing better to do than dispense Engrish wisdom and Confucian quips. I think that was when I had to stop it with Gardenscapes finally, by the way.

Lily also has notably terrible taste in men. It begins with an ugly break up with some intolerable Wall Street guy named Blaine or something. But then she meets her neighbor, the artist himbo named Luke, who is a different kind of terrible guy. Of course she develops a crush on him on the very first day, maybe even at first sight — a concept which infuriates me any time I encounter it. He has a child and a custody battle with his ex-wife (they mercifully have given a nice personality to her. Somehow they didn’t fall in to the Evil Ex Wife stereotype). He is a fairly deadbeat dad, but no matter. It looks like they are going to make Lily fall more and more in love with him for no other reason that I can see than that she makes bad life decisions when it comes to men. She also has made a carpenter friend about whom I have no complaints. She is competent and strong. Way to go, Regina.

Sneerscapes: Dollissa’s Revenge

While playing hundreds upon hundreds of hours of this game, I haven’t remained entirely dead-eyed and unthinking. Shocking, I know. This time, instead, I have been thinking about how we would make our own version of this game. Running this site has conditioned me to insert ourselves into everything I experience, to compare, to enhance, to better understand. It’s my lifestyle and has been for a while, I guess! But that’s enough about me — unless I write it into our forthcoming game! This game is our destiny… for now.

Have your mind absolutely blown in Sneerscapes, our new FREE puzzle game! Help Dollissa maintain her properties through agonizingly tedious tasks which accurately reflect the monotony of real life. Be rewarded by witnessing preposterous but biographically accurate plot twists and the illusion of choice in outcomes. Select from Dollissa’s expansive wardrobe. Interact with a cast of characters — most of whom aren’t even horrible! Plant seeds of flowers as well as potential romance as suitors and side games of “first dates” randomly appear. Match and collect inside joke tokens in hundreds of variations of puzzle levels to earn the in-game money that these games always require you to need.

Meet Our Protagonist

Dollissa is a sassy and constantly outraged thirtysomething person. She has inherited a mighty estate from a now-deceased relative because we cannot dare have her being independently wealthy and deciding on her own to buy two houses in the city, side by side. No. In our game, her Eccentric Great Aunt (whom she was named after and who looks just like Dollissa, but with greyer hair) made that amazing decision to improve her life all the way back in the past, when she was a thirtysomething herself.

Dollissa is surrounded by friends and cats, schemes and whims, all in a setting of urban-residential paradise. If she doesn’t have enough flaws for our audience to relate to, we will make some up!!

Game Play

Help Dollissa navigate her wacky life by improving some rooms and building some gardens in the yards — also by engaging in endless basic property maintenance. You will do this by earning pentagram stars through winning matching games and then completing set tasks. Pentagrams grant her the power to complete these tasks thanks to the favor of Satan. Match-pieces include things relating to the Sneer Campaign: bettefaces, the snide looking aside emoji, pennies representing our penny profits, classic television sets, bats, bees, wasps, stray pieces of cereal, cat kibble, a little machine that spits out cat hair everywhere that you must then collect. You know, all of those special obstacles they throw into these games.

And the side quests! “Help Amandoll furiously vacuum Sneer House 1!” God. I really want to make this game just to show you how great it would be, and how just like every other game it is. Only this time with fewer frustrating main characters! Just because we can’t stomach them! I guarantee she won’t have time to experience unrequited love with a guy who is covered in red flags — at least not for the entire length of the game — because she will be more focused on accruing wealth and improving society! Dollissa can be a real shero, like the app-playing world needs!

Friends and Foes

There will be an assortment of secondary characters: Amandoll, Dollissa’s equally as sassy friend who is an artist, and Jamie, the handyman and personal cook, live in the houses with her. Manny will show up for special Manny events and Manny theme weeks. Other Sneerists will occasionally pop by to further some cockamamie plot and to thrill the dedicated army of players and fans.

But also prepare to be swept away by drama as other room mates move in and then back out eventually, different neighbors help or offend, and everyone who comes and goes are of course always original and fictitious characters who are never based on anyone real, living or dead. And obviously there will be a rotating cast of comical stray cats. Every other game has pretty much only one cartoonish pet, but not us. In this one way, we will stand alone. We will have multitudes of cat characters.

Fantastic Storylines!

Experience the Sneer World which will be drawn in that generic style that it seems like everything is drawn in these days, not at all unique like my personal drawing style. Make no mistake that while this will be a fun diversion filled with inside jokes, we will certainly be cutting corners and “parodying” every other game left and right. What are we, made of time?? (We aren’t). Dollissa will go on dates, engage in charitable acts, swear off dating, become woven into the very fabric of the community, volunteer at festivals, meet clowns, jockeys, magicians, farmers, and ventriloquist dummies, and who knows — perhaps some day become Mayor (or at least puppet mayor whose strings extend all the way to a political force in Canada)?!

There is only one way to know: install and play our app game! After we make it! After we learn how to do so, or convince a friend to learn to do so, and then convince them to want to make a game for us for free. I can’t wait!