GROW Tower Order: Box, Yellow Pot, Bricks, Ground, Red Pot, Monster

Hints if you want to solve it yourself

The monster is not on the board at the start. The walkthrough lists it as the sixth click, after the five panels above.

You win GROW Tower when every panel reads Lv.MAX and the tower reaches the sun-shaped lamp. Five starting panels means 120 orders of those five. The monster is a sixth click that the two walkthroughs both put last. The rest of this page is where those two lists agree and what the level lights show after a miss.

We built our own order puzzle on the same idea. The orders we checked ourselves are on the order solver.

What is the GROW Tower game?

A short browser puzzle by On Nakayama, released on eyezmaze.com in January 2009. You click five panels one at a time, and the objects they add grow and react to each other. The goal is to grow a tower up to a lamp shaped like the sun.

It belongs to the GROW series, the run of order puzzles that includes GROW RPG and GROW Cube from 2005. Every entry works the same way at heart. You get a handful of pieces, you choose the order they go in, and the game plays out the consequences. You make no other decisions.

GROW Tower is one of the smaller entries. Five panels are on the board at the start, and the monster is the sixth click. The whole thing fits on one screen and a run is over quickly. The two walkthroughs use different names for the same six clicks.

Step	Jay Is Games	Mostly Muppet
1	Box with the red button	Button
2	Yellow sideways pot	Bowl
3	Brick block	Brick
4	Ground (rock and grass)	Earth
5	Red pot with a hole at the bottom	Clay pot
6	Monster	Winged creature

How does GROW Tower work?

Each click adds one panel's object to the tower. After every click, the pieces already there can level up, and some change what the others become. Eyezmaze's own instructions say the game is complete when all panels reach Lv.MAX.

The level indicators for each panel are shown on screen, so you can see how far each piece got. That makes GROW Tower easier to read than some of its siblings. GROW RPG, for example, hides the result behind a fight animation.

The pieces change each other as the tower rises. Jay's January 20, 2009 review says the items combine and react with each other, and the result depends on the order.

On that same page, commenter zxo wrote on January 21, 2009 that you have to get the order exactly right before any of the items reaches max level.

Why won't my tower reach the sun?

Because at least one panel did not reach Lv.MAX. Either it went in too late to finish growing, or a piece placed after it interfered.

If it barely grew, it probably arrived with too few clicks left. If it grew and then got stuck, look at what came after it.

How many orders does GROW Tower have?

120. Five panels can go in five times four times three times two times one different orders. Only the right one gets every panel to Lv.MAX.

That number is small enough to brute force. Even at two minutes a run, trying every order would take four hours.

GROW RPG has eight items and 40,320 orders, which is 336 times 120. GROW Cube has ten items and 3,628,800 orders. The level lights are why Tower is a useful place to practise the same check on a smaller board.

What do the level lights tell you?

Which panel fell short of Lv.MAX. They stay on screen after a failed run, so the weak panel is visible before you restart.

1. Read the level lights before you restart.
2. Note the panel furthest from Lv.MAX.
3. Change that panel's slot on the next run.

The general one-change method is in our order puzzle guide. GROW RPG hides its result behind a fight, and GROW Cube uses ten items.

Where can you play GROW Tower today?

On eyezmaze.com, where the game's page is still up. The GROW series originally ran on Flash and was later ported to HTML5 when Flash was shut down.

Plenty of other sites mirrored the Flash files over the years, and many of those copies no longer run. If a page shows a blank box or asks you to install a plugin, it is one of them. The story of which GROW games made it past Flash is in what survived after Flash, and what GROW games are lists the whole series with dates.

What should you play after GROW Tower?

Another order puzzle with rules you have not seen yet. The method only stays fun while the answer is unknown, so a fresh puzzle beats replaying one you have already solved.

Island Evolution is our take on the same mechanic. You place eight items on a deserted island, one at a time, and each placement changes what the others can become. The evolution chart shows what each item needs, so you can reason about the order before you commit. There are 40,320 orders, a 27-point maximum, and three orders that reach it.

Those three orders are listed on the order solver, derived from the game's rule table. The hints section is the short version, and the game FAQ covers the rest.

Where do these facts come from?

• The GROW (series) entry on Wikipedia, for the creator, the release month and the move from Flash to HTML5.
• Eyezmaze, the GROW Tower page, posted January 21, 2009, for the Lv.MAX win condition.
• Jay Is Games' January 20, 2009 review of GROW Tower, by Jay, for On's line that there is only one correct answer, the note that items combine and react, and the Walkthrough Guide posted by Xi the same day.
• zxo's comment on that Jay Is Games page, January 21, 2009, replying to Soniclover, for the line that the order has to be right before any item reaches max level.
• Mostly Muppet's GROW Tower walkthrough, January 27, 2009, for the same order: button, bowl, brick, earth, clay pot, then the winged creature.
• jay's comment on the Jay Is Games GROW RPG page, July 24, 2005, for the eight items. Eight factorial is 40,320.
• Jay Is Games' September 17, 2005 review of GROW Cube, for the Walkthrough Guide's ten listed items. Ten factorial is 3,628,800.
• It Still Works' guide to GROW Tower, for the sun-shaped lamp goal.

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