Developer: Mischka Kamener
Publisher: Mischka Kamener
Platform: PC (Steam)
Tested On: PC (Steam)
Room to Grow – Review
Every once in a while a puzzle game that just clicks the right way comes out; with games such as Stephen’s Sausage Roll and Pipe Push Paradise being good examples. Room to Grow is the latest to join their ranks, bringing a perfect combination of simple but unique mechanics and hard but satisfying puzzles along with a cute ‘snaktus’ to top it all off.
Story
Room to Grow doesn’t have a single word of a story besides what is told on its steam page. Players control a snake-like cactus, a snaktus for short, traveling back to its home in the desert. On the way back to its natural habitat, this surprisingly cute creature will traverse different environments, all while helping replant its cousins, the succulents.
Graphics
The game’s graphics are quite minimalistic, with little more than the snaktus and succulents featured in each level, along with a grid and walls colored to match the environment. While at first this could seem like a detriment, it ends up working in favor of the game, allowing players to focus on the puzzles by reducing visual noise to a minimum.
Along with these features, the game also includes a few animations for the snaktus. These animations include its sliding through the grid and a few reactions to player input, where it’ll display emotions upon getting stuck or trying to move backwards. While not adding anything to the gameplay, they do serve to make the extending critter quite endearing.
Sound
Room to Grown’s sound is incredibly good, with both a fantastic soundtrack and SFX. Said soundtrack is comprised of several sets of relaxing tunes, with each environment having a different set and serving as enjoyable background music without taking the focus from the gameplay. The SFX also follow this principle, adding a smidgen of extra goofiness to the game without becoming bothersome.
Gameplay
As already stated, Room to Grow belongs to the puzzle genre, more particularly to the Sokoban subgenre, where players are tasked with moving items to designated positions. Throughout each level, players will have to control the snaktus and its position in order to move the succulents into the holes where they’ll be planted.
To do so, players will able to extend the cactus from its original position following the marked grid, pushing said succulents around. In order to reposition the creature, the option to make it extend into marked walls will also be available, pushing players in the opposite direction as long as free space exists.
Later on into the game, several other mechanics, such as paths adding controllable branches to the cactus, will appear although the basic loop will remain the same. Instead of peppering the player with loads new mechanics, Room to Grow’s main challenge is provided through the layout of its levels and grid, making players figure out the optimal positioning for each of them.
Although Room to Grow is not an easy game by any means, it does provide the option to skip levels without drawback, besides the inherent annoyance of seeing the level count not maxed out. Upon deciding to do so, the level will simply remain unfinished and allows players to progress while still being able to come back at any time.
After finishing the main areas, players will also be able to access some extra zones with a few harder levels to challenge themselves with. Curiously enough, these zones also act as puzzles by themselves, only becoming solvable after finishing all the levels inside them.
Conclusion
Room to Grow is an incredibly enjoyable puzzle game with satisfying gameplay and challenges despite its difficulty. To top this off, the game features a surprisingly low sale price of €8,19/$9.99/£7.19, making it quite affordable for anyone interested.
Personal Opinion
“As anyone may guess from reading the review, I thoroughly enjoyed Room to Grow. It presents unique and innovative mechanics and presents increasing challenges without altering the game’s flow or core loop. Funnily enough, I had trouble taking screenshots for the game, because every single time I opened it to take a new one I’d end up trying to finish a level and then another and another. I kept forgetting the reason I had even opened the game in the first place, only to end up closing it after a while, realizing a few hours later I still needed footage and repeating the loop. I even ended up enthralling a friend of mine, by sharing my screen while playing and having him give me directions for what he thought would work (I ended up gifting him the game). Anyways, if it wasn’t clear enough: I completely recommend Room to Grow, it’s a good game that features plenty of content and is very cheap to sweeten the deal.”
Room to Grow - Review,
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