Game: Growbot
Genre: Adventure, Indie, Point & Click
System: Steam (also available on Windows, macOS, and Linux)
Developers | Publishers: Wabisbai Play | Application Systems Heidelberg
Controller Support: No
Price: US $19.99 | UK £15.49 | EU € 16,79
Release Date: October 21st, 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to Emily Morganti and Application Systems Heidelberg
Growbot is an adventure point and click game released on PC by Wabisbai Play. Wabisabi Play was founded in 2018 by Lisa Evans, with the support of the UK Games Fund. Lisa has worked as a professional illustrator for over a decade and began developing Growbot as a way of bringing her worlds and characters to life.
I’ve been following the game’s development for a while and I’ve played the demo during the Steam fest, so I couldn’t wait to try out the full game.
Nara
In Growbot you play as Nara, a little titular robot who lives aboard a biopunk space station. Nara has been sent from her home to begin her training to become a captain aboard the Ventral space station. After Nira’s first night on the space station, she awakens to find everyone is missing and strange invasive alien crystals have sprouted up all over the space station.
You take control of Nara as she try to solve the mystery of the alien crystals and find her missing friends, fixing machinery, and searching for the captain aboard a space station called Kew. I don’t want to go into the storyline in great detail as you really should experience it for yourself.
Dome-Headed Robot
As you can see in the images, Nara is a dome-headed robot. It becomes slightly clearer as to why she has a dome as her head once you have played a few minutes of the game. You see, in one of the rooms across the hall from Nara’s bedroom, you will find a pink squishy like creature sitting upon a shelf. When you interact with the creature you discover that this is Nara’s biological companion, Brainapilla.
Brainapilla takes up residence in the dome of Nara’s head. From then on Brainapilla acts as an in-game hint system to nudge you in the right direction. Brainapilla also shows up in the games menu bar at the side of the screen, Brainapilla will jiggle in the menu if it can offer help.
Meet some Weird and Wonderful Creatures
Growbot is a typical point and click game. You’ll pick up lots of strange items in your expedition around the space station, such as little light sprites who help to solve some puzzles. Some of the puzzles require you to mix items together that you have found, or put the parts back into the correct place on a robot.
I did find that half the time I was playing the game I hadn’t much of an idea of what I was meant to do but I found that to be part of the fun of the game. It wasn’t a frustrating experience at all, unlike some other games can be. Combining items was more of an exercise in let’s click this and put it with this item and see what happens. Sort of trial and error.
Flower Arranger
After looking around a few rooms on the space station you’re shown how to use the flower arranger. The flower arranger is used to create shields and shield keys to allow Nara to proceed in the game. Using flower notes you have collected in the course of the game you can make the shields and keys.
Again, this is another area in the game where I wasn’t sure what I was doing. It is explained to you how to use the flower arranger but not in any great detail. So again it was a case of trial and error, but I managed it and completed the game.
Visuals and Controls
Visually Growbot is stunning. It has looks of strange and wonderful hand-drawn graphics that just pop out of the screen at you. The look of the game was what drew me to it in the first place.
It really is beautiful and the images in this review don’t do it justice as all as it is so much better looking on the screen. The music is just as lovely as the visuals of the game, and perfectly suited to its surroundings.
Growbot is controlled solely by the mouse. Drop and drag to combine items and click to move Nara. It all works smoothly.
The game performed well on my laptop, it did have a crash when I first started to playing it, but an update seems to have sorted that out.
Conclusion
Growbot is an interesting and enjoyable game, I loved my time with it. With gameplay inspired by adventure classics such as Loom and Machinarium, and beautiful hand-drawn artwork created by a seasoned children’s book illustrator, charming characters and an intriguing narrative.
If point and click games are your go-to genre, this is one that should be in your library.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up 