GROW RPG Order: Full Solution + Why It Works

Hints if you want to solve it yourself

The fight is a playback. If the hero is under-equipped, move the item behind his gear one slot earlier and change nothing else. A chain that needs many levels cannot finish from the last slots. The stairs, which some guides call a hole, go last in the agreed order. Lock any item that is clearly placed, then try what remains.

GROW RPG is the July 2005 entry where On Nakayama dressed the order mechanic as a role-playing game. Jay Is Games dated the release July 23, two months before GROW Cube. You drag eight items onto a small green sphere, one at a time. After each placement, everything already there tries to advance a level. Then the story plays itself: a hero, a shop, a dungeon, and the devil.

You do not aim, dodge or pick a difficulty. The fight is a readout of how far the items got, which is a readout of the order. That is the whole answer to "how do you beat it", short of the clicks themselves. We built Island Evolution on the same one-decision-per-item shape and left the shop and the combat out.

What does it take to beat GROW RPG?

Place all eight items so the hero reaches the devil strong enough to win, and the world is far enough along to support that. The order decides every level.

Nakayama published it at eyezmaze.com. Jay Is Games noted that some items stop around level five while others climb past seven, so a long chain that lands late cannot finish no matter what the last clicks are. Once the eighth item is down, the story runs on its own. Like the other main GROW games, it has one good ending, many bad ones, and a secret one.

An Android and iOS remake, GROW RPG Σ, followed in April 2015. The original also survives in HTML5. Which of the series made it past Flash is in what survived after Flash.

Why does the devil keep winning?

Because at least one item was too weak when the story started. Either it went in too late to finish leveling, or something placed after it damaged it. The fight only plays those levels back.

The same order always produces the same fight. A lost run is a labeled result, not a bad roll. Beginners change three things at once, win nothing, and decide the game is random. One change per run is slower to set up and much faster to read.

The review at the time mentioned that badly timed placements can damage the tower. When something collapses in the story, look at what was already on the sphere before the thing that broke arrived.

What did the RPG layer add?

Combat, a shop and a dungeon. None of them respond to skill. They present how far your items grew.

Jay Is Games described it as the classic formula with RPG-like elements attached, and that is the right way round. The hero buys health and weapons. The dungeon has treasure. The purple devil is what players remember. What the devil is measuring is the planning you did several clicks earlier.

A 2008 IGDA paper credited the GROW games with defining a genre of their own. GROW RPG is the entry that makes the trick easiest to miss, because a screenshot looks like an action game and the play is a sequence.

How do you read a failed run?

Look at the sphere before the story starts. Items that reached a final form look finished. Items that did not are stuck partway. Write that down, then change only the weakest slot.

If the hero walks into the fight under-equipped, the item behind his gear did not climb high enough. Move that item earlier. If the result gets stronger and nothing else gets worse, keep the change. If something else breaks, you have found a dependency, which is worth more than a lucky win.

Once five items are clearly in place, six orders remain for the last three, and you can try them. Swapping two items at once throws the comparison away, because you will not know which move caused the change. The general version of this is in the strategy guide.

1. Play a reasoned first guess and write down how far each item got before the story starts.
2. Watch the fight for the moment it fails: weak gear, or something that collapses.
3. Move one item one slot earlier. Keep the change only if that item gets stronger and nothing else gets worse.
4. Lock any item that is clearly in the right slot. With three left, try the remaining six orders.

How is this different from an idle game?

An idle game spends your time. An order puzzle spends a fixed number of turns, one per item, and nothing accumulates while you think.

People searching "growth RPG" usually want one of three things. Some want this game and are half-remembering the title. Some want an RPG where the world grows. The rest want idle and incremental games, where numbers climb while you look away. A bad order here is finished. The item that needed many levels from the last slot is not going to catch up, because there are no turns left.

Ours is the first kind. One decision per item, no numbers ticking up while you wait, and no shop.

Which item should go first?

The one other items wait on, or the one with the longest chain. An item that tops out fast can take a late slot. Anything that harms its neighbors should go as late as you can afford.

Those three rules do not hand you the eight clicks. They rule out most of the 40,320 orders before you play. The first slot gets a growth chance on every later turn. The eighth slot gets one chance, plus the ending. A chain that needs many levels cannot finish from the back of the order.

Our own island publishes that dependency list in the evolution chart. GROW RPG makes you discover it from the fight. GROW Cube, two months later, shows a level number beside each item instead of hiding it in a battle.

Where can you play GROW RPG today?

On phones, as GROW RPG Σ, released for Android and iOS in April 2015. The original browser game also survives in HTML5.

The series as a whole, from GROW ver.3 in 2002 to GROW Park in 2015, is in every GROW game in order. The island entry from 2007 has its own page at GROW Island order. Nothing new in the main line has appeared since GROW Park, and the smaller line stopped at GROW Thanks in November 2018.

If you want the same mechanic with the requirements written down, start a run of Island Evolution. The hints are short, and the game FAQ covers the rest.

Where do these facts come from?

• Jay Is Games' July 2005 review of GROW RPG, dated July 23, for the eight items, the green sphere, the shop, the dungeon, the winged devil, the level ceilings, the note that badly timed placements can damage the tower, and the walkthrough guide order house, grass, castle, water, tower, rock, chest, stairs.
• Midnight Synergy, The Grow Series, Solutions, for the same order written as town, tree, castle, water, tower, rock, chest, stairs.
• Cheatbook's GROW RPG walkthrough, which lists houses, forest, castle, water, tower, rock, chest, stairs.
• The GROW (series) entry on Wikipedia, for the July 2005 release, the April 2015 Σ remake, the endings structure and the 2008 IGDA paper.
• eyezmaze.com, where Nakayama published the game.

Island Evolution is an independent game with no affiliation to Eyezmaze or On Nakayama. GROW RPG is their work.