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App Army Assemble: Topsoil - a well fertilised puzzler?

Or is it one to crop short?

App Army Assemble: Topsoil - a well fertilised puzzler?
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| Topsoil

If you're a bit fond of a quick-to-play puzzler, Topsoil is a tidy candidate for your gaming library.

The idea here is to match up various forms of flora to harvest and to bag as high a score as you possibly can before your garden fills up.

You've got to be a bit strategic in your performance, though, as you've got soil colour to watch out for as well as the different symbols.

It's got some nice visuals and a nice idea, but what did our esteemed members of the App Army think of it? Let's find out.

Paul Manchester

It's a bright and polished little puzzler. The very simple mechanics makes it easy to get into and a nice game to pick up and play on the go. Having said that, I initially played for around 30 mins and had my doubts over its long lasting appeal without any real hook to keep you engaged. A lack of any real progression or targets (there are several achievements to collect) and what seems to be an annoying play limit (five attempts before requiring you to watch an advert for more lives), will inevitably mean this app has a short but happy life span.

Christopher Scott Brown

Topsoil is a nice puzzler to kill time with. I feel like it could benefit from some background music. It gets a little monotonous after a while.

GGod Hand

Aside from its simple and neat art design, there's not much going for this game. It's a high-score puzzle chaser that you may grow bored of playing within minutes. The lack of music makes it more dull. Even worse, your play runs are limited, forcing you to watch an ad to earn three plays, or pay a fee to remove ads entirely.

This game could serve a purpose to kill time while stuck in line somewhere, but even then I wouldn't invest my time with it even as a free-to-play title. I do not recommend.

Aswin Sambamurthy

This looks like a Threes/Triple Town hybrid, both with the gameplay and with the 'earn your plays with ads' and achievements part. It's simple, neat and fun, but the downside is that you know in advance when you'll run out of moves. Given the choice next to TT and Threes to pick for killing time, I'd open the other two any given day. Levels / Power-ups could have helped keep the interest going.

Jeramy De Vos

This game is fun for a little while. After about 15 moves or so, though, it feels like the board is in an unrecoverable state and I'm just waiting for it to be over. I could just be bad at it, though.

Benjamin Tan

I really like this game. It has an intuitive and clean interface. Its simplistic and casual gameplay allows for a relaxed game where one does not require much thinking to have fun. It's a good time passer for short commutes or toilet breaks. I find a sense of achievement in trying to harvest all the plants to make the soil type the same.

I also like that there is replayability where you get to collect birds to increase multiplier. However, due to the limited amount of playable rounds, I can't be sure if this game has enough content to keep me going in the long run.

Laura Egri

This is a fun little time-waster with a certain feeling of accomplishment. Technically speaking, it is just a score chaser -or should I say: a score harvester - but the simple, intuitive interface, the clean graphics and the easy handling puts it into the catchy puzzlers like Tetris or Snake. It isn't something to keep you hooked for hours, but it's not meant to do that. It has enough diversity and a small amount of strategic thinking to suit for a zen-time game.

Ed Davis

It's an interesting game that just serves as a quick coffee break game. The graphics are simple and quite nice, but you only get three games in before you have to watch another advert. Each game only lasts about two minutes, so I guess if you don't mind watching adverts every five minutes, then it's fine. You can pay to get rid of them though.

The gameplay is simple and doesn't take long to learn the cycle of soils, but does take some thinking where you place and dig your plants.

The App Army is Pocket Gamer's very own community of mobile game experts. Each week, we provide them with a bunch of free codes and early access to the hottest upcoming games so they can provide their thoughts in features like this. We also host regular community-driven events with them in mind like tournaments, giveaways, and multiplayer evenings. To join, simply follow this link to the page on Facebook and request access. We'll get you in right away!
Emily Sowden
Emily Sowden
Emily is Pocket Gamer's News Editor and writes about all kinds of game-related things. She needs coffee to function and begrudgingly loves her Switch more than she lets on.