Courtesy of Penny Arcade:
http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/RPG/index.html
Very clever little flash game. Just drag stuff onto Grow and you'll figure it out. I don't want to spoil the surprise with a description of what the game actually is - it's more satisfying when approached without any knowledge of what's going on.
Heh, cool. I remember the regular "GROW" being fun, I'll give this a try.
Weeee, I win! There seemed to be a little more logic to this one than the original Grow, but not much. Trial and error with cute animations.
Yay, I beat it (too)!
Much more enjoyable than the original Grow. There was a pretty decent logic to it.
Or you could work out how many times each object upgrades until it hits max...Originally Posted by Wholly Schmidt
That's really nifty. Clever puzzle.
Well, it's a bit more complex than that.Or you could work out how many times each object upgrades until it hits max...
Yeah. The forest, for instance, needs to get out very early, or it's growth gets cut off and it slows down the growth of the shop. The castle needs to reach max before the end of placement, or the king won't be able to defeat the dragon. When to grow the water is critical, but the water doesn't "upgrade" at all, per se.
Interesting, but it's basically all just trial and error. Most of the key points aren't really logical (spoilers ahead). For example, the water has to be placed on a specific turn so that it'll cut off some trees, which apparently causes them to create bombs (?), which you need to get the super-sword. But unless you happen to try throwing the water out at the right time, you would never expect anything like that. Same with most of the other stuff. Sort of vaguely worth playing, but not that great.
Well the water is more complex than that Rywill, because it both upgrades everything, and ceases the hole-causing stomps. I figured out that I had to place the water earlier than I was because placing it too late caused my tower to be placed in a hole and be dead on arrival. Placing it too early, though, wasted its "upgrade all" effect on too few structures. So while I could have just flailed away with trial and error, a little reasoning eliminates or illuminates certain choices.
It doesn't upgrade everything - everything that can be upgraded upgrades after every turn. Unless that's what you mean, but that's not a special property of the water or anything.
[size=6]Spoilers.[/size]
Really, what you had to look at was the fact that: The town could go to level 8 and still not be maxed, it has to go first. Castle needs to be at level 4 by turn 8, so you need to place it on turn 4. Tower needs to be at level 4 by the last turn, so you place it right after the castle, and so on and so forth. Stairs need to be there on the last turn.
So, there's really very little trial and error except for the first time you do it. Also, the tree breaking thing confused me, it seemed to be kind of tacked on there, without any logic of its own.
SPOILERS
I don't think it's that much of trial-and-error. Sure, you can't extrapolate the placement without giving it a go first and seeing what stuff does, but once you play through once, you understand the logic of what each object accomplishes pretty well. For me, the biggest issue was trying to figure out when to place the shop in relation to the castle and the tower. Once you realize that the mountain grows only in relation to the chest and the stairs being placed, you know to make those your last three turns. The tower never comes under attack, so it isn't a priority either, although it needs time to level up. It's pretty easy to figure out early on, then, that the priority pieces are the shop, the woods, the water and the castle.
In regards to Rywill saying that placing the water on a certain turn isn't intuitive, it is, because if you place it any later than that, your structures start becoming destroyed by the stomping. You can't place it on turn 1, which means you need to place it on turn 2 or 3.
Spoilers
This quote pretty much sums it up the difference of opinion on this game. Because although you don't realize it as you're writing it, what you're saying is not at all intuitive. That's 100% trial-and-error. Yeah, you can't place the water on turn 1 (it evaporates). How would you possibly know that unless you tried it? Yeah, if you place it on turn 2 or 3 it will stop the stomping. How would you know that unless you tried it? Yeah, if you wait too long, a stomp-crack appears under the tower. I suppose you could guess that, eventually, if there are enough cracks there won't be enough room for your buildings, but where and when the cracks appear is not at all intuitive and can only be learned by trial and error. If you're smart, after the first time your tower gets hosed, next game you count the number of stomps before that crack appears.
The whole game is like that. It's all about failing, and then counting backwards to figure out what you should have done instead, based on the knowledge you got from your error. You fix the bottleneck, get a little farther, but fail on something else, and again count backwards to fix it. There's no way to reason your way through this game. You have to play it a couple times trying different things to see what works and what doesn't. There's no reason to think, for example, that the shop needs to upgrade more than the castle, or that if the tower upgrades enough it will have armor in it, or that cutting off part of the trees with water will get you a super-tree, or that a super-tree will have bombs for fruit, or that those bombs can destroy the rock in front of the mountain, etc etc etc. All of this is stuff you have to learn by trial-and-error. You try something, something unpredictable and unexpected happens, you try and figure out how to make it happen again (or not, if it was something bad), repeat. The only reasoning comes at the end of the game, where you can look and see which structures hit "max" and which didn't, so you know which ones you have to try and plant earlier.
Right. When I say "trial and error" I don't mean that you should (or have to) queue things up completely at random each game until you hit on the solution by blind luck. "Trial and error" means that you can't predict what will happen from any particular move until you see it play out. So you try something at random to start, see what worked and what didn't, keep what's good and change what was bad. See how that goes. Keep what's good and change what's bad. Etc. But it's difficult or impossible to predict, without trying it, what changes will end up being good and what changes will end up being bad. There's no particular reason to think that structure A should go last and structure B should go on turn 3, until you try them on different turns and see that it doesn't work. Which is fine, if you're into that sort of game--if you like games like Mastermind, you will like this game. But whether you like Mastermind or not, you have to concede that it's a game of trial-and-error.
I agree with this description, but I actually enjoyed this little game because of all the unexpected stuff that happens. Yeah, it's not a logic puzzle, it's a trial-and-error guessing game. So what? Even the fail states are entertaining, so I don't fault the game for forcing you to fail before you succeed.
Put me in the "don't like it" camp. It's a linear puzzle game with a single puzzle and some branching animation for the failure states.
There's a new one, Grow Cube.
http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube/index.html
Felt like the easiest one so far. The animations give a pretty good idea about what went wrong and what went right.
Neat little puzzle / game. Definitely inspires me to spend more time someday on my crazy Nethack / Majesty / Europa Universalis / dynamic storyline game I have kicking around in my head...
I can't believe people are arguing against the "trail and error" comment. Is there anything at all intuitive about the King bringing you back to life if the mountain range is long enough? Could one be reasonably expected to say "Hmm, if there were just more rocks, I bet the King would cast his revive when I die."?
It's sort of neat for a flash game and it's got charming little animations, but it's fundamentally a very simple puzzle(the water is the only thing that has different rules than "level up until max level X"). Watching the failures is unnecessary, all you need to do is see what isn't maxed and place it earlier. Worth playing to see the funny little dudes get fried, but not worth beating.
der, that was easy. Pretty obvious after two failed attempts as to what should go where. Water ALWAYS has to go on the fourth turn, for example.
In which Napoleon dies when he kicks a sink after being sent by his leader to kill twelve kobolds, opening new romantic options for Josephine.
Troy
You don't have to play it if you don't want to, TSG. :)
Are you kidding? Those were comparisons born of love!
Troy
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