Growbot took a special place in my heart ever since I first experienced the demo back at Gamescom 2019. Two long years of waiting followed, and now that it’s finally out and that I had a chance to fully play it, I can say that the end product is even better than I hoped it would be.

Growbot is a short (3-4h) point-and-click adventure with a lighthearted story and laid back puzzles. The universe of Growbot exudes positivity through its every fiber and each second of gameplay is a real treat. It is obvious that a lot of love was put into creating the game, but what stands out the most is the adorable hand-drawn artwork (accompanied by a fitting soundtrack as well). I couldn’t think of any other game that has lovelier graphics than Growbot. No matter the frame, no matter where you look, it will simply warm your soul and make you feel all fuzzy inside through its innocence and cuteness.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2638266883
The Growbots are robot-like creatures, with a gentle heart. They live on an asteroid named Kew and their daily occupation is tending to the flowers that provide a natural source of energy to its inhabitants. Their quiet and harmonious life is shaken when one day, a mysterious force manges to break through the protective shield of their home. You play as Nara, a growbot in training, who is tasked to restore the balance to their world and reinstate the power to the shield. The story follows the adventures of Nara and her charming companion Brainapilla in their quest to fix the station’s machinery by solving various puzzles, but also focuses on Nara’s evolution as a growbot to her full potential.

The puzzles are moderately difficult, leaning towards the easy range, although a couple of the end-game puzzles are slightly more difficult than the rest. Throughout her journey, Nara learns the sound of twelve different flowers, which she then combines in short melodies that act like spells (pretty much like in LucasArts’ old school point & click LOOM™).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2638266687
In other words, roughly half of the game’s puzzles are auditory, asking the player to identify six sounds based on a sample melody, and then to use them in order to replicate the melody, thus creating a key item or a protective spell. For audio impaired people or for those who don’t have good musical pattern recognition skills, there’s an alternative easy mode to these puzzles where the names of the flowers are also displayed. The rest of the puzzles should be easy enough to solve even for younger players, with little close to no assistance needed from an adult.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2638267193
Growbot is an incredible game that deserves to be experienced by everyone, regardless of age or gender. It’s such a unique and heart-warming experience, one that must be lived rather than described with words. Let this masterpiece transport you in a “children’s book”-like world, full of emotion, color and make you forget about the daily problems for a few hours.

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Okay, this game is ridiculously adorable point and click adventure game and I had a lot of fun playing it. You can tell that a lot of love went into this.

So why can't I recommend it? It's a 3 hour game regularly for $20 and I got it on sale. It was really cute and fun, but it is very expensive for the amount of actual gameplay, especially since there's no real replayability here. As long as you understand that you're only getting about three hours worth of gameplay for the price point and you're okay with that, then I can recommend Growbot.

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Growbot is a third person, 2D point and click space adventure with a variety of puzzles, based around a musical theme.

You are Nara, a trainee growbot, hoping to fill the position of captain aboard one of the six space stations protecting your asteroid homeland, Kew.

Whilst on board, an attack on the station leaves the captain injured, the crew missing and inflicts substantial damages.

It is up to you to uncover the mystery of the incursion and stop the perpetrator before the station, and possibly your homeland, is destroyed.

Growbot is instantly likeable with its cute characters and unusual settings.

The hand drawn artwork is gorgeous with some bizarre and original ideas, and an atmospheric musical score and effects; It all adds up to a strange and surprising experience which will keep you interested throughout.

The beauty of the game is in its simplicity.

There are no heavy inventory mechanics and hardly any backtracking through locales. Puzzles are kept within a small area for you to concentrate on, which made the whole experience seem light and fast paced. The most I moved to solve a puzzle was between three screens, and they are always short and painless to navigate. You won’t need to worry about moving across the screen too slowly or whether you can exit screen quickly. It is all designed so that movement is really not an issue. Solve one puzzle and then you’re on to the next. They come quite fast and feel like a chain of puzzles, linking the story elements together.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2631403882

The puzzles bizarrely center around music. There wasn’t much of an indication that this was going to be a musical game but a lot of the puzzles revolve around listening to musical notes and then playing them in the correct order. Although this is the major theme, there are plenty of other puzzles to keep game play varied. Some of the puzzles are quite difficult, and the instructions can be a little vague. On a few occasions I was left scratching my head as to what to do or even what the game was trying to ask me what to do. There is a hint button which you can turn on and off which will help you immensely on some puzzles but occasionally you’re left to work it out yourself. If you miss the small tutorial explaining the puzzle you are unable to play it again which can be frustrating. Overall, I completed all puzzles without guidance but they did feel challenging in places.

The characters you meet along the way are adorable and just as bizarre as the environments they dwell in. Everything feels whimsical and full of eccentricity. Even the characters voices sound strange, with their unintelligible ramblings, but at the same time are charming and pleasing. There isn’t much character development. Encounters are quite brief and not much personal information is provided. This makes the characters a little shallow but entertaining nonetheless.

The hand drawn artwork looks amazing and the space station is a place of beauty to navigate.

There are lots of memorable moments created by the artwork and there is a tinge of comedy running through events. The music is very atmospheric with some weird and wonderful sounds and effects. It keeps proceedings firmly mounted on a kooky platform of strangeness.

The story was quite intriguing and I was interested to know who was behind the attack and why, but the narrative tapered off slightly towards the end and I was a little underwhelmed with the finale.

Growbot will definitely please point and click fans and will appeal to those who like something a little different and original. I’m not sure it will offer an amazing challenge but it is easy to get lost in the strange world that’s been created, and I really enjoyed the experience.

https://youtu.be/QgFdwog-SnQ

Growbot is a simplistic version of a point and click adventure. You have an inventory, but it is rarely full, and when you are required to combine objects, it is always obvious and painless.

You can examine objects in your inventory which gives you basic feedback, but there is no turning or manipulating objects like in some games of the genre. It really is very simple.

Some objects, called consumables, will come and go with puzzles, and others will become important powers which you can use, called keepables. For example, a consumable might be a set of items to make up a potion whereas a keepable might be the power to destroy crystals.

Walking around the space station you can examine any interactable object, which can be highlighted using the space button if you so wish. Some will offer clues to puzzles ahead, some will offer light relief and funny moments, and others you can collect. There is a text bar at the bottom of the screen relaying any useful information about the object.

On your mission to rebuild the space station and stop the infiltration you will encounter many different characters. You can start conversations with these, and your questions will be displayed for you to ask. Some of these can be branching, but mostly you’ll get a short answer to your question. There’s not much time for chit chat.

The six space stations surrounding the asteroid of Kew make up a network of shields, and offer protection against enemies. The shields are generated by power flowers, which give off musical notes when interacted with. Each flower has its own signature tune.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2631224656

To manufacture a shield, you need to find a shield and place it in the flower arranger. The shield will have a song which you can listen to. A flower has its own note, so by collecting and placing flower notes into the grid in the correct order will replicate the sound of the shield and build it.

There are three shields you need to build and they get more complicated, with some flowers having more than one note.
This makes it a little more difficult to decipher the shield tune and find the corresponding flower notes. If it does get too difficult you can turn on the hint system and it will tell you which flowers you need to choose.

There are a variety of different puzzles like mazes, slider puzzles, number puzzles and putting different shaped wheels on cogs, for example. Some of them are very imaginative but none of them are too difficult, especially with the hint system. It just about hits the right difficulty level, leaning slightly towards the easier side.

The game took me between six and seven hours to complete with most of the achievements.


Beautiful hand drawn artwork with charismatic characters and gorgeous environments. Everything is colorful and imaginative and extremely original.


The sound is beautiful and very atmospheric, matching the aesthetics perfectly, and creating an unusual vibe. Special effects noises are very good and the characters voices are full of character, even if you can’t understand them.

Growbot is a highly original attempt at a puzzle game with some very unusual characters and imaginative puzzles.

I really enjoyed my time on the asteroid Kew and would recommend you check it out if you enjoy quirky and offbeat adventures.

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The game seems to be inspired by the Machinarium in terms of how they structured individual scenes, but the overall aesthetic is different, not sure what you call that visual style where you have surreal dioramas, it kinda reminds me of old Russian cartoons. It's definitely an eye-candy experience, if nothing else, it's a fun game to play if you just like cute characters and pretty scenery, I especially like the underwater level. The narrative is actually pretty enjoyable, it's lighthearted so not too much to digest, but at least it's creative and there are not many things like that. For disclosure, I was offered a review copy, but I also purchased the game before accepting it, so the free copy will be given to a friend.

I found the gameplay a bit unpolished, while I was enjoying it at first, it became increasingly more convoluted and frustrating toward the end, not just in terms of the puzzles. I think the devs wanted to add more variety into the game, but in doing so, they also changed the pacing of the game and how I approached the logic. It's not that the game was difficult, sometimes I was not sure how to progress in general. You can complete the story in about 3 to 4 hours, and most of the optional achievements are easy to get. I actually had to play with a hearing handicap because the notes on the music puzzles were too similar, but at least it has the option to see the words instead. I had 2 pretty big glitches, hopefully, I am the only one because nobody else mentioned it, I actually could not see the text for most of the game because of foreground bugs.

In theory, the game is intuitive with the tooltips, you can hold space and see the hotspots, and the mouse lights up when you hover over an object. However, I think the visuals were a little bloated and you often have to read everything to understand the puzzle. The game has a surreal theme when it comes to puzzles, which in itself is not a problem, I don't think that all puzzles have to be grounded in reality, but there were a few that I didn't like. There were also many mechanical puzzles like moving objects in limited space, even a relatively complicated number puzzle. I kinda wish you had a skip timer if you couldn't do one of those for like 5 minutes, I had to brute force a few of those.


+ fun characters, interesting world to explore
+ nice level design, good variety with environments
+ even with some polish issues, I like the creative puzzles
+ decent basic features like hotspots, highlighter, hearing aid
+ optional achievements


Mechanical Puzzles - for the number puzzle you should elaborate on what the goal is, I had no idea what you wanted me to do. Some of the flower notes were too similar, I had to turn on hints for those. You might want to consider a timed skip option for any moving puzzles. In general, you probably could give the player a bit more directions for what you trying to do, sometimes I was a bit lost.

Glitches - I already posted the info in the forum, I could not read the top text for most of the game, and there might be a softlock at the end.

Overall Thoughts: 7/10

It's a fun puzzle game overall, I liked the story and the characters, but for something that comes with a $20 tag, I was fighting the game a bit too much, it could certainly use more polish with the interactions. I had a few bad glitches, not going to complain too much, whatever it happens to everyone, just fix it before anyone else gets them. I appreciate how creative the game is, but keep in mind that sometimes people buy an adventure game because they want the generic adventure game, when you start adding other features that are not as good, it lowers the overall quality of the game, like that labyrinth with sticky movement.

I'm sad not to recommend Growbot. The art is beautiful, the sounds are fitting, but the game is not what it claims to be. This is not a point-and-click adventure game. This is a story, with a single way forward at any given moment, and no way back to the places you've been. If I'd been expecting that when I went into it, maybe I would have enjoyed it more.

The story is somewhat charming, if odd, but spoon-feeds too much plot for my taste. I would rather experience the world than be told about it by some character or another. The puzzles come out of nowhere, and are explained thoroughly, but provide no real challenge. As another reviewer mentioned, this feels like a knock-off Amanita Design game.

It also took me two and a half hours to finish the game, and go back for some achievements I missed toward the beginning, in spite of my best efforts to click on everything and get distracted. Unfortunately, I just can't recommend it.

Almost 5 years of waiting on the wishlist have come to an end, and this beautiful game has finally seen the light of day. And how good she is! The beginning of the plot is quite traditional - something unkind and aggressive attacks our space station, so the little robot Nora has to become a savior for his entire green community. And it is really green here, because the whole station is a mixture of mechanical and plant worlds, inhabited by bizarre and incredibly cute creatures. They approached the creation of the world with great imagination, everything here looks so that you do not doubt the unearthly origin of these creatures for a second, while they remain understandable and very close to you. The game is very kind, a huge amount of love from the creators is invested in each scene, it cannot be fa ked. Bright colors here are not pointlessly scattered over the canvas, but very competently concentrated in the most necessary places. The riddles in the game are quite logical, there are a large number of musical riddles (which not all puzzle fans love), but there is a lightweight solution mode for them. Riddles are varied, some are even very difficult, so there is something to do. Everything in this game gives pure and sincere pleasure, it is even difficult to put into words. A very touching аnd soulful adventure, thank you!

I found this game disappointing. The puzzles were random and tedious, the story was boring and the instructions were badly written. It generally kinda looked like a poor imitation of an Amanita Design game.

Dove into the world of Growbot today and I absolutely love it. Puzzles so far on the easy side. An absolute recommendation for everyone who likes point&click!

The art is pretty, the music is sometimes good, and the story is cute, but that is where the positives end. For the price, the game is far, far too short (4 hours) and you are likely eating shrooms if it fully makes sense to you. The puzzles aren't hard and the ending just... ends. The last scene doesn't even make sense. Spend your money elsewhere.

Growbot is a lovely game that makes up for its short runtime by being a very high-quality production. It's kind of like when someone gives you one of those fancy candies as a holiday gift, you might only get a few bites out of it, but it's very delicious.

It's definitely a unique concept - it's a linear point-and-click puzzle adventure set on a space station that is also a blooming garden, crewed by botanical robot gardeners. The space station is being threatened, and you play as a newbie who aims to set things right again.

The highlight is the colorful art and unique visual style. Combined with the way the story is framed, it definitely feels like a children's storybook come to life. Everything in the game is very cute and non-threatening, from the tiny little light sprites to Starbelly, a jolly fuzzy creature with a big booming laugh who manages to power the whole ship on a diet of tea and jam.

Puzzles range from familiar mainstays such as sliding block puzzles and mazes to more inventive ones, like a puzzle involving musical flowers that serves as one of the main mechanics of the game. This is a very puzzle-focused game, and it will be up your ally if you enjoyed games such as Botanicula, TOHU, Papetura, or Luna: The Shadow Dust.

Growbot is a definite thumbs-up.