Treehouse Maker is a sorting game with building-construction, resource-crafting and match-3 mechanics. It shares similarities with colored water and beverage sort games that a player completes using test tubes or cocktail glasses.
In a grove of trees in a meadow, the player transfers colorful banded sections of square-shaped treetops to five empty spaces on the ground above the trees. They must match three of the same color to create the boards needed to build different structures commonly made from trees, such as cottages and sheds, flower boxes, lamp posts, home and directional signs, tables, seesaws and swings. Their actions can also create fences made of planks, logs, or even bushes and a stump with an axe.
The game is more difficult in the early levels than most games that feature test tubes and cocktail glasses. The shape of the treetops and the viewing angle make it difficult for a player to calculate the number of moves remaining accurately. The game also adds an extra difficulty by placing some brightly colored sections in shadows. The player can only remove the shadows by correctly sorting and removing the unobscured areas of the canopy closest to the obscured ones.
Treehouse Maker helps the player by showing the colors under the shadows at the start of a level for a brief few seconds. It also offers one additional benefit that makes it unique. If a player ever starts over, the game generates new random structures from the beginning that don't entirely match their previous play.
