Comments on: Tower Of Grow

By: Radiant

Radiant — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:41:26 +0000

Grow Island so far was the most difficult with Tower and Cube being th emost rewardingly enjoyable for me.

You guys found the secret Grow Island ending?

I love these; a new genre of casual game?

By: Janto

Janto — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:54:07 +0000

Interesting… I thought that the misleading animations was sort of the point, because rather than making you feel like a right berk once you’ve put down 3 pieces that are just sitting there, doing nothing, there’s a sense of having made something happen that keeps you from just hammering on the re-set key once it’s obvious things are awry. Every ‘exploration’ game should look at how these games give you feedback.

Grow Island is by far my favourite, though.

By: phuzz

phuzz — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:46:06 +0000

It’s the miss-feedback that gets me, I thought I needed brick robot dude to push the button, so once I’d worked out that combination I didn’t change it until I gave up and looked at the walkthru. I mean, brick on top of button looks like it ‘works’, why would you try anything else? The flowerpot has a similarly misleading animation in the wrong place.
Not that I’m complaining, I just treat these as a series of random choices that make pretty stuff happen.

Somehow missed Grow RPG until today as well, thank you :)

By: Demikaze

Demikaze — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:36:59 +0000

It took me 5 attempts, and I think unless you fluke it, you need the first few runs to see the animations and work out how that could affect your structure. It is logical but it’s not something you can win immediately. You need to experiement a little, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a failing. I thought it was a gem that really brightened up my morning. Thanks for the link!

By: Seth Tipps

Seth Tipps — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:51:55 +0000

Especially because it means he can re-use art assets. Think about how many hours he must save by doing that!

I agree somewhat with the argument that there is no logic to these puzzles. To a certain extent, he has over-animated it. Often you will get feedback from the puzzle that is misleading. There is occasionally more than one solution, but not all of the time, and this means that feedback should be either negative (as in the object tries to do something and fails) or positive (as in the object tries to do something and succeeds). As it is, you have a third kind of feedback, where the object tries to do something and succeeds, but it is the wrong thing to do. That ruins the feeling of logic, even if it is logic in a more complex form.

By: john t

john t — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:21:57 +0000

It’s not random, and it’s not hard to find.

There’s 120 possibilities here. I solved it in about 10 tries by focusing on what was happening. You can figure out pretty quickly what order a few of the pieces need to be in. After that it’s a matter of experimenting a little. I beat it by focusing on what the brick-robot was doing. Once you get that sorted, the rest of it falls into place.

If you know what you’re doing, all of these are pretty damn logical.

And, why should he ever do anything else? If I could do a single perfect, wonderful thing every year for the rest of my life, I would be completely satisfied.

By: Rei Onryou

Rei Onryou — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:28:58 +0000

That gave a good 10 minutes of fun animation. Enough to relax my brain before continuing on with the barrage that is final year projects!

By: Springy

Springy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:50:02 +0000

Reaction on seeing the picture to accompany this article:

“OMG my cursor has a twin!!”

By: Calabi

Calabi — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:40:42 +0000

It has an ending that pays off more than the majority of games now.

By: Colin Hansen

Colin Hansen — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:13:28 +0000

Grow Cube remains my favorite.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:01:18 +0000

I finally winsd!

By: The Sombrero Kid

The Sombrero Kid — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:48:55 +0000

grow rpg & grow cube i could’nt possibly decide between them