GROW Valley Game: How Does It Work, and Where to Play?

The valley starts nearly bare: green hills, a thin blue river and a cliff on the right. Under it sit seven square panels showing a microchip, a drafting compass, a magnifying glass over binary digits, a heart, a gear, a flask and a pickaxe. A box asks you to pick Japanese or English, then press PLAY.

The first thing you notice in Valley is the bar under the scene. Every click fills it with a field name, a slogan and a list of college departments, and one button on the bar is labelled in Japanese only: 学校情報ページへ. We played a run on October 4, 2026. No order is given below, and the closing sections cover our own puzzle, Island Evolution.

What is the GROW Valley game?

The sequel to GROW Island, posted on eyezmaze.com on August 23, 2010. Seven panels, each used once, build up an empty river valley, and the order you choose decides how far it develops. The game page lists two endings, one normal and one secret.

Jay Is Games reviewed it the same day. Its reviewer, Dora, described seven buttons that each start a different system, with systems that build on each other when they connect, and called the game short but worth ten minutes. The series list on Wikipedia places it between GROW Tower (2009) and GROW Cannon (2011). For how the series fits together as a whole, see our GROW series overview.

How does a GROW Valley run work?

Click a panel and watch what it builds. A caption bar under the scene names the panel and lists a set of college departments. Later clicks can upgrade earlier pieces, and a LEVEL UP tag appears over a panel when that happens.

1. Pick English in the opening box and press PLAY. The seven panels finish loading while the instructions are on screen.
2. Click a panel. On our run the pickaxe put two small workers and a boat on the river. Other picks added a radio tower, a tunnel and a ring road through the middle of the valley.
3. Wait. While a panel animates, it shows an orange fast-forward icon, and clicks on other panels did not always register for us until it finished. Each animation ran roughly ten seconds. We did not test whether clicking the icon speeds it up.
4. Read the tags. LEVEL UP over a panel means a later pick fed into it. Panels you have used turn pale.

The scene keeps building after your last click, and a full run takes a few minutes of mostly watching. A Reset button on the bottom bar starts over at any point.

Why does every panel describe a college department?

The game does not say. The captions read like a school prospectus, and the bar has a button reading 学校情報ページへ, "to the school information page". GROW Island before it was commissioned by the Shibaura Institute of Technology as promotion. The Valley page we read names no sponsor.

The pickaxe is Architectural systems, with civil engineering and architecture departments and keywords like earthquake and recycling-based society. The heart is Life sciences, the flask is Matters and chemical systems, the gear is Mechanical systems. The microchip, compass and magnifier cover electronics, design and mathematics. In English mode the captions keep a few spelling slips, such as "developement" in the architecture slogan.

The captions are worth reading as clues. If a caption names something a field depends on, look for the panel that supplies it. Our GROW Island guide shows the same idea on Island's eight engineering panels.

How many orders does GROW Valley have?

If each of the seven panels is used once, as Jay Is Games describes, there are 5,040 possible orders. That is fewer than GROW Island's eight panels allow, and far more than you can try by hand.

Game	Year	Panels	Possible orders
GROW Island	2007	8	40,320
GROW Tower	2009	5	120
GROW Valley	2010	7	5,040
Island Evolution	2026	8	40,320, 3 perfect

The count is why trial and error gets old fast. At about three minutes a run, a tenth of the orders is roughly 500 runs, more than a full day of nonstop clicking.

How do you beat GROW Valley without a walkthrough?

Treat each panel as something other panels might depend on. Use the captions and the LEVEL UP tags to find what a piece needs, place providers before the pieces that use them, and change one position at a time between runs.

The tags are the best clue the game gives you. When a later click sets off LEVEL UP on an earlier panel, you have found a link between two systems, and that link usually wants the provider early. Note which panels never gained a level, because those are the ones your order is starving.

We set out the general method in our order puzzle guide, and the GROW Tower page shows it on a five-panel game where you can test it quickly. The secret ending is listed on the game page but not explained there, and we did not reach it.

Where can you play GROW Valley today?

On its original page at eyezmaze.com, which now loads the game through Ruffle, an open-source Flash Player emulator. CrazyGames also hosts a copy credited to EYEZMAZE that runs on Ruffle. The eyezmaze.com app archive lists no Valley release for phones.

Our run on eyezmaze.com showed a Ruffle splash and then the game's own loading screen. For how Ruffle covers the rest of the site, see our Eyezmaze guide, and the GROW Flash games page covers which titles made it past the end of Flash.

What should you play after GROW Valley?

Island Evolution, an eight-item island order puzzle that shows its rules up front. Each item's needs are listed before your first click, and 3 of its 40,320 orders reach the perfect score of 27.

Valley only reveals a link between two panels after it fires, through a LEVEL UP tag. Our evolution chart does the reverse and lists every dependency before you start, so all the work goes into planning the order. Stuck one point short? The strategy notes give hints without naming the order, and the game FAQ answers the questions new players ask first.

Where do these facts come from?

• Eyezmaze.com, the "GROW Valley (GAME)" page posted August 23, 2010, for the release date, the sequel-to-GROW-Island line, the two listed endings and the how-to-play text.
• Our own playthrough on that page on October 4, 2026, through the Ruffle player the page loads, for the seven panel icons, the language box, the department captions and their wording and spelling, the fast-forward and LEVEL UP tags, animation times, panels turning pale after use, the Reset button, the absence of an undo button and the school information button.
• Jay Is Games, "Grow Valley" review by Dora, dated August 23, 2010, for the seven buttons, each button being used once, systems that build on each other, and the ten-minute verdict.
• The GROW (series) entry on Wikipedia, for On Nakayama as creator, GROW ver.3 as the 2002 first entry, and the release months of GROW Island, GROW Tower, GROW Valley, GROW Cannon, GROW Maze, GROW Clay and GROW Park.
• Jay Is Games' 2007 review of GROW Island, for its commission by the Shibaura Institute of Technology as promotion and its eight panels.
• Jay Is Games' January 2009 review of GROW Tower, for its five panels.
• Eyezmaze.com, the "Flash GAMES" page, for the old Flash games being revived with Ruffle and the smartphone remark.
• Eyezmaze.com, the smartphone app archive, for the Android and iOS releases it lists, none of them GROW Valley.
• CrazyGames, the "Grow Valley" game page, checked October 4, 2026, for its hosted copy, its EYEZMAZE developer credit, the Ruffle engine note and mobile browser support.
• The Ruffle project's own site, ruffle.rs, for Ruffle being an open-source Flash Player emulator.

Island Evolution is an independent game with no affiliation to Eyezmaze or On Nakayama. GROW Valley and the GROW series are their work.