[Review] Growtopia

[NANO]

Growtopia is a server-run MMO sandbox video game where players can chat, farm, add friends, trade, build worlds and PVP.The game was initially released for Android in November 2012, and has since been released for iOS, Android, Microsoft Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

As of February 28, 2017, an Ubisoft acquirement of Growtopia was announced and was completed during Ubisoft's 2016-17 fourth quarter, with the original developers being design and general advisors to the game's continued development.

Growtopia is a 2D MMO sandbox video game in which almost everything in the game can be grown from seeds of trees.There are no goals. However, there is an achievement system, epic quests, and other quests from NPCs.

A new player will be sent to a private world called TUTORIAL which teaches the basics of the game with an item called Growpedia for reading tips. The player starts out with two basic tools: a fist for punching and breaking blocks, and a wrench for wrenching items and edit items' properties. After a player finished TUTORIAL, they will be sent to START for learning more about the game.

Players can visit other people's worlds or create their own worlds. When a player creates a new world, the world will be procedurally generated. Worlds in Growtopia have the same size, except special worlds (such as TINY). Players can break and build blocks, get seeds or gems from blocks, plant seeds, and harvest trees. Players cannot do these activities if the world or the area they are punching is locked by someone else.

Players can lock areas they want by using different sizes of locks: Small Lock, Big Lock, Huge Lock, and World Lock (there are also other types of locks such as Diamond Locks, but works like World Locks). When a player has locked an area with a lock, the player can access other people to the lock or edit properties by wrenching the lock.

In 2012, Seth Robinson began thinking about making a new game. At the time, Robinson made six mockup screenshots and sent to Mike Hommel to entice him to help with the project. The game was named Buildo.

The game UI started to take shape with Hommel's mockups.On October 22, 2012, Hommel uploaded a video on his YouTube channel showing the development of the game before its release.

After three months of development, the game was released on Android as a free beta on November 30, 2012 under the name Growtopia. They moved the game out of beta and release the full version on January 9, 2013.The game has been continuously updated since the release. On February 28, 2017, Ubisoft announced an acquisition of Growtopia, it was completed during Ubisoft's 2016-17 fourth quarter, with the original developers being design and general advisors to the game's continued development.

The game can be played on multiple operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. The game can also be played on consoles.

The iOS version was released on January 11, 2013, after the Android version on November 30, 2012.Following the mobile releases, the game was later brought to computers; a Windows beta version was released on July 9, 2013, and a macOS version was released on July 27, 2013.

The Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions of the game have been released digitally on July 18, 2019.

Growtopia received "mixed or average" reviews from professional critics according to review aggregator GameRankings.

Video gaming website Jay Is Games described the game as "simple and easy enough to work on the mobile platform (and be fun for kids), but with enough room for customization and socialization".148Apps gave the game a 4/5, saying "the crafting mechanic is unique".Pocket Gamer's Peter Willington scored the game 6 out of 10, said he dislikes the crude menus, the UI is bland and cramped and hates the character design.TouchArcade wrote "With online games like this that take place in persistent worlds where everyone can interact, you’ll no doubt get some people trying to destroy things and generally make life tough for everyone else".

The first official 'Growtopia' merchandise is a T-shirt. The t-shirt, called "Into The Game" was released on Amazon on October 17, 2018 with various sizes, five colors: black, asphalt, cranberry, kelly green and brown. On November 26, 2018, a premium version of Into The Game T-shirts were released.Ubisoft also released "Emerald Lock Premium" T-shirts on the same day.

GrowCon is an official meetup dedicated to Growtopia. The first one was held on April 21, 2019 at Max's Restaurant in Quezon City.It was limited to 30 invited people from Facebook groups and Growtopia forums community. The event included photo booth printing, bingo type game and food with in-game contests.

System Requirements

• Operating System Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10
• Processor Any 1 GHz processor
• RAM 2 GB
• Video card Shared or dedicated graphics
• Hard drive space 500 MB