T w e n t y S i d e d

GROW: A game where careful experimentation and observation will allow you to create highly ordered nonsense.

Remember GROW? It was a strange little flash puzzle game that made the rounds a while back. I think I first found the link via Steven. The person who made that game is still at it, and has a bunch more games along those lines at his site, EYEMAZE.

These games are interesting for the way they blend intuition and logic. Using pure logic, it will take you many attempts to learn about what all of those mysterious doodads do and how they interact before you learn enough to take a shot at finding the ideal solution. However, with a little intuition you can reduce the number of attempts by discarding certain moves. Let’s see. I can add water or people to my cube-shaped world. People need water, so I should put water first. People make fire so fire should maybe come after people. The intuition isn’t usually as clear cut as in that example, (which I’m not even sure is correct, puzzle-wise) but it’s there and it’s a real part of the game. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s like a logic puzzle for people who are more intuitive than logical.

Thinking back to my post on right brain vs. left brain – I wonder which type of person would fare better? No matter how you apprach the puzzle you will need a good memory.

Here is another worthy attempt, “Tribute to GROW“:

Tribute isn’t as brain-tickling as the stuff at EYEMAZE, and the artwork isn’t as polished or as compelling, but this is still an interesting game.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.