Growth is a very relaxing board game. The premise is very simple, you send out animals from their habitat tiles to explore the board with the hopes of discovering new habitats. When you deconstruct the game play loop, it’s sort of like a less lethal mine sweeper with a range on how far you can explore.
The end goal is to uncover enough of the board, which then adds a new board to explore. The immediate goal is to uncover new habitats since discovering new habitats increases the number of animals you have. The animals are sent forth to explore and each animal has a different range and ability.
For example, on the flower field habitat, you can unlock some bees. The bees have a short range but they can fly over rivers making them highly efficient when it comes to traveling over small bodies of water. The bees cannot fly over mountains however, which the mountain goat can do. The boar can travel very far, and etc. Each animal has a different range and ability when it comes to traversing the land.
The game also has hints based on the color of the tiles. Darker colored tiles signal that a habitat is adjacent to that dark colored tile. So when you first start the game, you will notice some dark green tiles very close to the starting point, meaning a forest habitat is nearby.
Once you start exploring enough of the map, the hints come less and less frequently so you have to daisy chain the animals by creating small habitats. How this works is every animal you send out creates their own habitat tile at the destination. If you create two habitat tiles next to each other, they combine and form a habitat where you can send out animals. You’re essentially daisy chaining animals together to have a longer reach.
There is a cost to this since you have to spend two animals and only get one back so I would recommend using this as infrequently as possible. There are some key areas on the map that will give you a free bird, which you can send long distances and it will uncover a large area. This will let you plan how to use your animals more efficiently.
The mechanics in Growth are very easy to grasp and understand. The game never feels too complicated and since there is no clock running down, you can take all the time you want in the world. It honestly feels very relaxing to play. The only end goal is uncovering as many boards as you can before you run out of animals and there is enough of a design to the board where you have to use some strategy.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2300300/Growth/
Review Score: 98% positive with a total of 75 reviews as of this writing (12/01/23)
Developer: VoodooDuck
Publisher: Assemble Entertainment
Release Date: Oct 16, 2023
MSRP: $9.99
I received a key in my email. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 1.2 hours
Achievement Score: 10/30
Ducky Obrien 