In contrast to the ever-shifting chaos of its puzzle structure, Growbot’s visual and auditory presentation cohere to create a singular atmosphere which permeates every room of the game and captures the imagination in countless ways over the course of its roughly six hour play-time.
Ideally, the puzzles would be more visually clear, negating the need for such written instructions, but their elements can be hard to decipher, which often makes decoding what exactly the game is asking of you more difficult than overcoming its intended challenges.
As puzzles take shape in so many ways throughout the adventure, it can be difficult to jump between them so rapidly, and this issue is only compounded by the vague text tutorials that accompany them. While admirable, this passion also seems to be the source of many of the game’s pitfalls. Some have you navigating mazes, others fitting gears into place, and all of them exude a burning creative passion. New and interesting puzzle ideas surfaced at a pace that truly shocked me, and that compelled me to see what was next in a way few games manage. As speedily as this idea was introduced, however, so was another puzzle mechanic, and then another, and then several more still until it became clear to me that Growbot never intended for melody-matching to be the core of its gameplay, but for that core to be comprised of variety itself. I found this concept to be quite engaging once I managed to parse its obscure tutorial, and I was eager to collect more notes and form increasingly complex tunes.
Quickly though, you’re given the ability to craft melodies out of musical notes you find throughout the world represented as flowers, and to use these melodies as keys to new areas. Characters and objects block various paths, and you must procure specific items in order to bypass them. At the outset, the space station on which the game takes place seems to operate as you’d expect. Growbot’s puzzle design is one of its more interesting facets. However, your player character’s swift walking speed and snappy animations help to alleviate this mild sluggishness. I felt the fading transitions from screen to screen aired on the side of tedious, often lasting just long enough for me to notice.
Another staple of clicky-puzzlies – moving between rooms – is handled with slightly less grace. This minor tweak to the conventional inventory system provides you with an organic sense of direction, a subtle objective marker letting you know which items you should be paying attention to right now, and which you’ll be using later. Yes, gameplay still largely consists of clicking around the screen to either pick up objects or walk between different spots on the floor, but this process is made uniquely intuitive thanks to an inventory with distinct and readable sections: one housing permanent items with multiple uses throughout the game, and the other displaying your “consumables ” items to be used only once before being discarded. Trawling through screen after cluttered screen for that lone pixel impeding your progress can be a chore, but thankfully Growbot’s developer Wabisabi Play seems to have spent far more time fleshing out their game’s world and puzzles than they did deviously hiding click boxes.Īlthough it doesn’t entirely reinvent its genre’s inventory-based wheel, along with varying its approach to puzzle design, Growbot takes a few decisive strides toward streamlining the point-and-click formula. I’ve always found point and click adventure games to be practically unparalleled in their ability to tell stories and build worlds, and unparalleled as well in their ability to endlessly frustrate me.
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