Video Game / Gardens Inc

Opening screen of the first game

Gardens Inc. is a four-part series of time management games, developed by Nitreal Games and World-Loom and published by Artifex Mundi. The games follow the exploits of Jill and Mike, who own the eponymous gardening company, as they attempt to grow their business from a local landscaping gig to a multinational company. They have to contend with mysteries, rival companies, and plot twists of all sorts while both their business and their relationship get stronger.

• The first game, From Rakes to Riches, sees college graduate Jill return home to her beloved grandparents, only to learn that a greedy real estate tycoon is planning to buy and bulldoze the family home. If Jill can win the upcoming landscaping competition, she can use the cash prize to save their home from destruction.
• The second game, The Road to Fame, shows that Jill and her friend (and eventual boyfriend) Mike are doing well with their gardening business, and they're hoping that another contest victory will bring them even better contracts. But the man who tried to take over her family's home has escaped from prison and is out for revenge, and they have to put a stop to his schemes.
• The third game, A Bridal Pursuit, is centered around Jill and Mike's efforts to expand their business in Europe. Now engaged, they're also working to plan their upcoming wedding. Unfortunately, the owners of a rival gardening company keep interfering in their contracts. Meanwhile, Jill's grandparents have given the young couple an heirloom wedding ring which seems to be the key to a centuries-old mystery.
• The fourth and final game, Blooming Stars, brings our heroes even greater fame as the stars of their very own gardening television series. Not only is the show an international adventure, but Jill is pregnant with their first child. However, everything is not as picture perfect as it appears on the surface, and the landscaping couple find themselves in very hot water before it's all said and done.

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The Gardens Inc. series grows the following tropes:

A-M

• 100% Completion: Each game has several unlockable achievements which are a way of measuring this. The renovation projects that form the main sidequest of each game (see An Interior Designer Is You) are an even more direct example, as the progress on each of these is actually measured with a status bar meant to eventually reach 100%.
• Alliterative Name: Vincent Valentine, the television executive running Jill and Mike's show in the fourth game.
• Anti-Frustration Features: With regards to the bonus goals, sometimes players will understand what they're requesting after they've already put in all the plants. The game allows the player to change fully-grown plants by interacting with them just once, rather than replanting and then watering (which could take up to four interactions), in order to save time.
• Babies Ever After: The main campaign of the last game ends with Jill giving birth. Once the nursery has been renovated to 100% completion, the player can see the finished result, including who will be living in it.
• Brainy Brunette: Jill, who is no slouch when it comes to thinking up creative ways to resolve problems for herself and other people.
• Broken Bridge: These frequently have to be repaired in order to reach parts of levels. In the fourth game, some levels have gaps which are too wide to cross with a bridge, so they use hang gliders instead. In one level, the bridge is part of the local road, and repairing it leads to Jill, Mike, and the entire television crew being arrested for illegally crossing a border.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Agent Styles wears cool clothes, wants to chase aliens, sings along with the car radio, gets sick from eating too much honey, and is excited by snow. But both his higher-ups and the heroes tolerate it because Styles is an effective, intelligent, and thorough investigator who is really good at his job, and also a very Nice Guy.
• Caring Gardener: Jill and Mike are genuinely nice people who really do care about their work.
• Cassandra Truth: In the second game, Cliff Gold tries to warn Mike and Jill that Lady Bloom is the real criminal mastermind. He's actually being completely honest for once; not only is she using her gardening competition as a cover to steal a priceless jewel, but she was The Man Behind the Man in the first game's debacle.
• Christmas Special: In the bonus levels of the fourth game, Mike and Jill return to the set of their television show to film one of these, in which the network helps them raise money to buy holiday gifts for orphans.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Mike grumbles, in the bonus levels of Bridal Pursuit, about Jill having this. She doesn't, really, but he's not happy about the current situation.
  Mike: When we get home... IF we get home... we really need to talk about this whole 'world saving thing', Jill!
• Clueless Mystery: While there is a mystery to be resolved in each game, there aren't enough clues provided that the player can solve it on their own, although they can probably guess at some of the details.
• Continuity Nod: Each of the sequel games has at least one returning character from a previous game. Jill's grandparents are involved in the first and third games; Angie and Agent Styles are part of the gang from the second game onward; Candace Gold appears in the second and third games; and Nicole is a helping hand in the third and fourth. This also applies to some of the antagonists, particularly Cliff Gold - he's in the first, second, and third games, but his villain status fluctuates wildly.
• Contrived Coincidence: In From Rakes to Riches, Jill's grandparents must cough up one million dollars or their family villa will be seized. Their only hope of saving it is for Jill to win the local gardening contest, which just so happens to have a grand prize of one million dollars.
• Cool Shades: Agent Styles is never seen without these.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: In the first game there's Cliff Gold, the real estate tycoon who tries to evict Jill's grandparents. The third game introduces Max and Lydia Perfect, who run a rival company and actively try to sabotage Gardens Inc. at every opportunity. This is also the case with Sidney Van Der Mann, assistant to Diane Powers, who turns out to be the Big Bad of the fourth game.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Mike begrudgingly makes a deal with Cliff Gold in the first game, agreeing to transport some goods with his truck in exchange for Cliff making sure that Jill wins the gardening contest. Naturally, this doesn't go quite the way Mike hopes.
  • Subverted in the second game, as Jill thinks she's making something like this with Candace Gold by allowing Candace to help her with gardening jobs while Mike is unavailable. However, Candace turns out to be a good person and a quick study at landscaping tasks, and Jill has no reason to regret trusting her.
  • Despite regarding him as her archenemy, Jill reluctantly meets with Cliff Gold in the third game, because he's the only one who can help her solve part of the mystery around her stolen heirloom ring. Unlike the first game's example with Gold, this time there are no negative results.
  • In the fourth game, Vince Valentine has no choice but to agree to the plot to mildly sabotage Jill and Mike's show in order to boost ratings, because if the show fails he'll be blacklisted in the industry.
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • It's clear that Jill and Mike are hard-working, down-to-earth people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty because they wear sensible red overalls.
  • Most people in suits, like Cliff Gold, Vincent Valentine, Diane Powers, and Lydia Perfect, are Corrupt Corporate Executives and/or are keeping important secrets from the heroes. Some of them are genuine antagonists, while others are just pursuing their own agenda and don't mean Jill and Mike any harm, but they've all got something to hide.
  • In the third game, Max Perfect dresses like a Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist at all times, which somehow accentuates the fact that he's a complete jerk.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The antagonists of the third game are Max and Lydia Perfect, who own the rival company Perfect Gardens. Sharp-eyed players may catch a brief mention of the company during the second game - they're among the finalists in Lady Bloom's gardening competition.
• Evil Debt Collector: Cliff Gold appears to be this in the first game, insisting that he doesn't really care about taking Jill's family home as long as he gets the money her grandparents owe him. Exactly why they owe him a million dollars is not explained.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The player will always succeed regardless of the time limit^note unless playing on the highest difficulty setting, in which case each level ends when the time runs out, but the protagonists themselves will sometimes fail at their objectives due to Rule of Drama.
• First-Name Basis: Mike's last name is Connolly, but it's only used sparingly and is never even mentioned in the first game. Angie only has her last name given during the bonus chapters of the second game (it's Wells, if you were wondering), and Nicole, who befriends the heroes in the third game, never has hers mentioned at all.
• The Food Poisoning Incident: Roughly halfway through the first game, Mike asks Jill on what is hinted to be their first date, at the Chinese restaurant whose grounds Jill is renovating. He's then absent from the next level because the food made him sick. It's not explicitly stated to be food poisoning (and Jill is perfectly fine, so it could have been a case of overeating), but he's definitely not feeling great after the meal.
• Forced into Evil: In the fourth game, Vincent Valentine and the rest of the crew are pressured by Diane Powers to perform acts of minor sabotage on the set of Jill and Mike's show, forcing the pair to come up with clever workarounds, in order to boost ratings. However, none of them (including Diane) are responsible for everyone being arrested for illegally crossing a border.
• Frame-Up:
  • In From Rakes to Riches, Cliff Gold frames Jill for sabotaging other entries in the contest, and Mike is the only one who can clear her name.
  • In Blooming Stars, Sidney Van Der Mann frames Jill and Mike for illegally crossing a border by providing them with faulty maps.
• Friend on the Force: Agent Gordon J. Styles is a private investigator who befriends the heroes beginning in the second game. They assist him with cases and he helps them with their various dilemmas; he also tends to protect Jill during plotlines where Mike is absent for one reason or another, and stands up for Mike as the best man in their wedding.
• Friendly Shopkeeper: Once the heroes befriend Nicole in the third game, she turns out to be something like this. As a shipping magnate, she uses her boat (in the third game) and helicopter (in the fourth) to help them acquire needed supplies in certain levels. She doesn't even charge them.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Unlocking some of the achievements involves finding and collecting all of a certain item in the various levels, such as coins, treasure chests, and - in the fourth game - disappearing and reappearing moles. Unlocking a couple achievements involves unlocking every other achievement.
• Group Picture Ending:
  • A variant appears in the collector's edition of Bridal Pursuit; if the player manages to earn enough money to get the wedding preparation to 100%, they're treated to a very short cutscene in which Mike and Jill get married. Afterward, the wedding scene that they have created shows all of the employees of Gardens Inc. as guests at the wedding.
  • The main campaign of Blooming Stars also features something like this, as several of Mike and Jill's nearest and dearest crowd into the hospital room after Jill gives birth. Grandma and Grandpa Maddox, Agent Styles, Angie, Nicole, and even Vince Valentine are all smiles for the new parents and the next generation of gardeners.
• Guest-Star Party Member: During the Dakota portion of the second game, Candace Gold joins Jill's team to fill in for the kidnapped Mike.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Clever, sensible Jill has brown hair; the somewhat more brash and excitable Mike is blond.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Mike has bright blond hair and is an absolute sweetheart (unless his temper gets pushed too far).
• Happily Married: The fourth game shows the newlyweds to be very much this. Jill's grandparents also fit the bill.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: In the second game, Jill intercepts Candace Gold when she steals important data from Lady Bloom's computer files for her father, and convinces her to come and speak to Agent Styles about the situation. Meanwhile, Cliff has apparently been watching the whole thing, so he kidnaps Mike and leaves Jill a message inviting her to trade Candace and the disc for her partner.
• How We Got Here: Each game opens with a cinematic showing something dramatic happening to Jill and Mike. The gameplay then skips back in time a few weeks or months to show how they came to be in their current predicament.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: While working on the gardening show in the fourth game, the continuous mishaps on set stress the pregnant Jill to the point where she gets taken to the hospital. Exaggerated later when she's among those arrested in a foreign country and held in such tight custody that no one knows where they are.
• Incessant Music Madness: During a road trip in the second game, Agent Styles drives Mike insane with his constant singing. Jill, however, enjoys it.
• Interface Spoiler: Neatly averted in the fourth game, with regards to decorating the nursery for Jill and Mike's baby. Until the doctor's revelation midway through the game, the player is limited in how many upgrades they can actually make to the room so as not to ruin the surprise.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Or exterior. Throughout each game, the player earns money which can be exchanged for decorative items to complete a side project. In the first game they renovate Jill's grandparents' villa; in the second they renovate the business headquarters; in the third they set up the couple's outdoor wedding; and in the fourth they design a nursery for the baby-in-progress.
• Kick the Dog: In From Rakes to Riches, Mike gets Jill out of jail by providing proof of her innocence - but while she's been locked up, the gardening contest ended and someone else took the prize. The mayor apologizes, saying that she would have won if she hadn't been disqualified by the arrest, but it wouldn't be fair to take the prize away from the person who has already received it.
• Last-Name Basis: Even though he's their friend for a long time and is even a member of their wedding party, Jill and Mike never call their investigator chum anything but Agent Styles.
• Long-Lost Relative: A big part of the plot of the third game centers around trying to learn the truth about Jill's ancestor, Gareth Maddox. Meanwhile, her new friend Nicole is also trying to learn the truth about her own ancestor, Claire Martel. As it turns out, Gareth and Claire were married and had children, meaning that the girls are distant cousins.
• Mission Control: In the first game, Mike takes on this role once he helps Jill establish the company, arranging contracts and handling the technical side of the business. Later, they bring in their friend Angie to handle such matters so Mike can join Jill in the field.

N-Z

• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Lady Bloom, in the second game, looks a lot like Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada.
  • One level in the fourth game has Jill and Mike renovating a garden for a pop star called Lady Haha.
• No Name Given: Jill's grandparents are never called anything but Grandpa and Grandma. It's also never revealed what Mike and Jill name their offspring.
• No Title: Blooming Stars is about Jill and Mike starring in their own gardening show, but the name of the show is never mentioned.
• Not Me This Time: In the lead-up to the fourth game's climax, Agent Styles informs the heroes that he's investigated the current whereabouts and activities of everyone who has given them trouble in the past. He confirms that whoever is responsible for their recent predicament, it's not any of them.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: In the first game, levels set in the town's historic district are haunted by the spirits of the town's original residents; this is similarly true of some levels in the second game and in the third game's bonus chapter. The specters look like greenish Bedsheet Ghosts, and Jill has to build a ghost catcher hut in order to hire a professional to come and send them packing.
• Parental Marriage Veto: This is seen as part of the third game's plot. Jill's ancestor, Gareth Maddox, was in love with Claire Martel, but her parents forbade the relationship. The couple eloped and fled their native France to settle in Wales, where they lived happily together until Claire's death.
• Perp Sweating: Seen in the second game when Mike is kidnapped by Cliff Gold, who does the Fifties-style lamp-in-his-face method of trying to get information. It doesn't work, of course - partly because the would-be informant doesn't actually know the answer, but mostly because he wouldn't give it even if he did.
• Pest Episode: Progressing through some levels requires the elimination of various pests, which take the place of the usual obstacles. Among these are Wicked Wasps, Scary Scorpions, Western Rattlers, and Mosquito Miscreants.
• Prequel: The bonus levels of The Road to Fame (only available in the platinum edition of the game) show how Jill and Mike met Angie and recruited her to be their Mission Control.
• Present Absence: As noted above, every game starts with a dramatic event, and then skips backwards in time to show how it happened. Each of these involves one or both of the heroes being absent in some fashion.
  • The first game opens with Jill being arrested, and once the game catches up to that scene, Mike spends several levels by himself trying to put things to rights.
  • The second game opens with Mike being interrogated. Eventually the player learns that he's been kidnapped by Cliff Gold.
  • In the third game, Mike is absent from a large chunk of the action because he's in a coma, but it's a long time before the player finds out how that happened.
  • The fourth game ups the ante even farther by opening with the reveal that both Jill and Mike have vanished without a trace.
• Pretty in Mink: Lady Elizabeth Bloom, a significant and eccentric character in the second game, wears a dress with an enormous furry collar and carries an equally fluffy matching fan. Overlaps with Purple Is Powerful, as the dress and fan are both deep purple and Lady Bloom is an extremely powerful and influential figure in the landscaping circuit.
• Protagonist Without a Past: We don't really know much about Jill's life prior to the events of the first game, other than that she lives with her grandparents and is a recent college graduate. We know even less about Mike's life prior to when she calls him to join her, beyond the fact that the two became friends in college; at least Jill has grandparents, but to judge by the games' content Mike has no family at all.
• Raised by Grandparents: Jill seems to have been raised by her beloved grandma and grandpa; her Missing Mom and Disappeared Dad never rate a mention in the games.
• Random Drop:
  • The general item shacks are a form of this. Every thirty seconds, they provide a couple units of one resource (farming tools, stone, wood, or seeds). It's actually not random - the drop is determined by whichever resource is lowest in the inventory - but it can seem this way if the player doesn't know that.
  • A more genuinely random drop can be seen in certain levels with rivers in them. If the level includes a river and a golden gate, keep an ear out for the clang of a bell - it means that a random delivery of resources has shown up at the gate, and there's a very short window of time in which one of the worker sprites can run to collect it.
• Ratings Stunt: Blooming Stars is all about Jill and Mike's gardening show, so the plot includes a number of these. Most particularly, if they can complete an extremely difficult challenge, the network will donate ten million dollars to the children's charity of the heroes' choice.
• Red Herring: In the fourth game, Vincent gets called back to network headquarters just before the level in which everyone gets arrested, making it look like he's responsible. As it turns out, he had nothing to do with it and is deeply upset when he learns what happened.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Jill is the blue, as she's very level-headed and sensible. Mike is the red, being very excitable and enthusiastic and also possessing a temper, which (as the third game particularly shows) can sometimes get him into trouble.
• Relationship Upgrade: Jill and Mike do this Once an Episode. They start as friends in the first game, though as the game progresses it's clear that they're becoming more than Just Friends. By halfway through the second they're an Official Couple; they get married in the third, and are expecting their first child in the fourth.
• Reunion Kiss: Overlaps with "Shut Up" Kiss. In the second game, when Jill and Agent Styles rescue him from his abduction, Mike starts to tell Jill that the thought of never seeing her again had left him despondent. She tells him to stop talking and kisses him, thereby sealing the Relationship Upgrade.
• The Reveal:
  • In the third game, it shocks Jill to discover that the person who stole the Maddox heirloom wedding ring is her new friend Nicole. However, as Nicole explains, she didn't mean to steal it - she was working on her own investigation along similar lines, and panicked when Jill and Mike found her. She returns it willingly.
  • Roughly midway through Blooming Stars, the pregnant Jill stresses herself into the hospital - at which point the doctor reveals that she's having twins, a boy and a girl.
  • After they get home safely in the fourth game, Theo the camera operator comes to visit Jill and Mike and apologize for what they've recently endured. He then tells them that the entire crew of the show was lying to them the whole time. The network was orchestrating all of the difficulties they had during the show's production in order to boost ratings, and possibly to ensure that the show would fail.
• Riddle Me This: In most levels, there is a bonus goal. Sometimes the terms of the goal are presented in a straightforward manner, but usually they take the form of a riddle of varying complexity. These clues describe how the plants being added to the current garden should be laid out, regarding details like symmetry or how many flowers of each color.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Cliff Gold is believed to be on one of these throughout the second game. As it turns out, he is... but not against Mike and Jill. He actually has no real problem with them and even tries to help them avoid getting into trouble. He wants revenge against Lady Bloom, who was The Man Behind the Man in the first game and then abandoned him in prison.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Angie dyes her hair magenta and has a friendly, bubbly personality; she's a loyal friend (and former client) to both Jill and Mike and eager to help them succeed in their work.
• Sequel Hook: The fourth game has the words "To Be Continued" at the end of the main campaign and again after the bonus levels. However, the devs have declined to continue the games (Blooming Stars was released in 2016), so Gardens Inc. has become an Orphaned Series.
• Shipper on Deck: Agent Styles happens to be on hand when Jill and Mike finally share their first kiss. The grin on his face suggests that he's been this all along.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some of the first game's trophies are shout-outs to popular franchises.
    • Setting the timer to 25 minutes gets the "Great Scott!" trophy.^note The timer isn't set manually, but in certain levels, exchange shacks will allow the player to trade various resources for additional time on the clock. If they somehow manage to trade enough resources to bring it up to the 25 minute requirement, the trophy unlocks. Unsurprisingly, this is one of the most difficult trophies to earn, and does not appear in any other game due to poor reception among players.
    • The ghost-hunting achievement is named "Who You Gonna Call?"
    • Solving the mine puzzle in the fastest way possible unlocks the "Jill Jones" trophy.
    • Infiltrating Cliff Gold's base of operations without getting caught unlocks the one called "Shaken, Not Stirred."
    • The trophy for chasing ravens is called "Nevermore."
  • In the second game, the shout-outs are in some of the dialogue.
    • While they're in Hollywood, Mike is excited to see "a real Star Portal!" Jill reminds him that it's just a prop, but he suggests trying to turn it on anyway just in case it's real.
    • Early in their acquaintance, an amused Mike tells their new friend, "You know nothing, Agent Styles."
    • When they find what appears to be the site of a UFO crash, Agent Styles is excited that this means he can finally reopen the "Styles Files" branch of his investigation agency, which is apparently meant to focus on the weird and unexplained. He even says, at one point, "The truth is out there."
    • Mike, prior to one level where alarms must be deactivated, refers to himself as "mister Mission: Impossible."
• Something about a Rose: The Road to Fame has a character referenced as "the Rose Thief," who steals valuable items and leaves a rose as a calling card; but it takes a while before Jill and Mike know who that is or what relevance they have to their current predicament.
• Spell My Name With An S: The games can't seem to decide if Jill's hometown is called Sunnyvale or Sunnydale. There doesn't appear to be a hellmouth anywhere, however.
• Suddenly Voiced: Apart from the worker sprites saying things like "Okay!" and "I'm on it!" when given directions, there is no voice acting whatsoever in the first two games; it's all subtitles. In the third and fourth games, cutscenes add voiceovers for Mike, Jill, and a few other major characters, though all the dialogue also continues to be written onscreen.
• Take Your Time: Blooming Stars adds a relaxed mode of gameplay, in which the timer is eliminated.
• Time Skip:
  • The end of the main game in The Road to Fame skips three months after the arrest of the Rose Thief to the day Mike proposes.
  • The end of the main game in Blooming Stars skips over the four months between the end of the gardening show and Jill giving birth.
• Tragic Keepsake: It's eventually revealed, in Bridal Pursuit, that Jill's heirloom ring is actually this. It belonged to her ancestor, Gareth Maddox, and is the key to finding the matching ring worn by his wife.
• The Triads and the Tongs: Implied in the bonus levels of the third game, when Agent Styles reveals that Jill and Mike have been hired to do landscaping for a Chinese mob boss. Except that no, they haven't - they're actually working for Cliff Gold, but they don't know it.
• The Unreveal: At the end of the fourth game's bonus levels, Jill and Mike decide that they'd rather devote their energy to being parents than to doing a second season of the show. Jill then tells Vince that she knows someone who "would be a perfect fit" to take over as host - but we aren't told who that is. Given the Sequel Hook which led nowhere, this may have been foreshadowing for a fifth game that was never made.
• Vanilla Edition: All four games are available in this form. The second, third, and fourth games are also available in collector's editions (or in the case of the second, a "platinum" edition), which add extra levels and unlockable achievements on top of those present in the base games, as well as more goodies like strategy guides.
• Victory Pose: All of the sprites onscreen do a little victory dance at the end of every level.
• Wedding Finale: The conclusion of the third game has Jill and Mike tie the knot.
• Wham Line: Agent Styles gets one of these in the fourth game, on the phone; he's at Gardens Inc. headquarters, which looks almost like a crime scene, and is talking (most likely to Angie) about Jill and Mike's disappearance. The tone of his voice makes it hard for the player to tell if this is good news.
  Styles: It's Styles. We found them.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: We're never actually told where Sunnyvale is located. Some parts of the first two games imply that it's in California, but it's never specified. The devs seem to make an effort not to give a concrete answer; even the license plate on Mike's truck is carefully designed to be a series of symbols, rather than a plate from any U.S. state.
• White Sheep: Cliff Gold's daughter Candace is a good person, and though she remains loyal to her father in many respects, she also recognizes that he's done many bad things. Jill likes her, and she helps Jill and Mike meet with her father when they have no choice but to ask for his help in the third game.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In the fourth game, Mike has vehement responses of this kind to mosquitoes and (in the bonus levels) piranha.
  Mike: I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!
• With This Ring: The ring isn't shown, but the second game ends with Mike asking Jill to marry him. Her response is also not shown, likely in order to create a Sequel Hook, but the premise of the next game makes it a Foregone Conclusion.
• Witness Protection: Agent Styles has to break it to Jill in the third game that Cliff Gold isn't in prison. He's turned state's evidence in exchange for this. Presumably it's against Lady Bloom, due to the ending of the previous game.
• World Tour: While the first game takes place entirely in Jill's hometown of Sunnyvale, and the second ventures to a handful of locations throughout the United States, the third and fourth games have Gardens Inc. do this as they work to expand their clientele internationally. Bridal Pursuit is set in Europe, with levels taking place in Spain, Greece, France, Germany, and Wales; the bonus levels add Asia to the mix by taking the heroes to China. The fourth game goes even farther, setting its levels on various continents rather than in specific countries, and takes the heroes to Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America before returning to North America; the bonus levels take place in Australia.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: Angie eventually figures out in the third game that Max and Lydia Perfect are the ones behind much of the trouble Jill is having finding out what happened to her ancestor, because they want the treasure he may have concealed in the mountains of Wales. Sure enough, the Perfects turn up to claim the treasure when Jill finds it. Max and Lydia are not happy to learn that the thing Gareth Maddox treasured so much was his beloved wife - the clues lead their descendants to her grave.
• You Owe Me: Cliff Gold assures Jill, in the third game, that he will eventually be coming to collect on the favor she owes him for his help in solving the mystery. And he does - in the bonus levels. By helping him (unwittingly) to eliminate the final threat against his family, Mike and Jill enable him to leave witness protection and he considers all debt on either side to be cleared. They decide they can live with that.