Growing Pains

The bastard lovechild of Meatboy and Katamari.

This is yet another 2D pixel platformer glutting up the Steam marketplace. This one has a gimmick where your character grows as you progress which imposes some challenges beyond the usual tired, old platformer mechanics. There's another game on Steam featuring a similar mechanic, but unhelpfully I can't find it... I just recall it did the job a lot better than this. The game is really limited but one great feature of the game is that if you set the resolution to 4K (an option in the settings) then it immediately crashes, sparing you from having to face any more of the mediocrity. Otherwise, very lazy, poor quality graphics, blippy annoying music, and stale gameplay are the best you can expect from this. For comedy value, the developers actually think they should be paid $5 for this, but I don't appreciate the attempt at humour. I would consider paying them $5 if they promise never to touch computers again.

Tags: Platformer Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library Tags: Flash game quality. Alphabet letters fetch hunt through uninspired platforms. Size of protagonist gimmick just another factor to manage on top of the frustrating level navigation. You go through rooms that contain letters of the alphabet written through platforms, you gotta easter egg gold bars and leave the room while swinging balls with spikes are around. Sometimes you are too small so you gotta press a button to inflate the sphere protag, do it too much and you have to die and retry. You return to default size everytime you clear a room. Level design is lazy, gimmick gets old very fast. Got through a bunch of rooms until I spelled the whole alphabet. It felt condescending and strangely inappropriate. Xbox360 pad was detected and working correctly, this game offered some resolution options.

Типичный платформер с таблицей рекордов. Ничего выдающегося, ничего отталкивающего.

Такое что-то, непонятное. Играем за маленький... ммм... даже не назовёшь это шариком. Прыгаем как марио, только нету кого убивать) Просто от точки "А" до точки "Б"...) если некуда время убить - ещё пойдёт, но не более..)

Show me that goal again. (Oh, show me that goal) Don't waste another minute, grab the glowsticks. We're nowhere near the end (nowhere near) The best is ready to begin. Oooohhh. As long as we got each other We got the world shrinking right around us. Baby you and me, we gotta be The luckiest dot who never stops growing. As long as we keep expanding We can take any level that comes our way Baby, chain or spikes, full of frights We got each other, sharing the challenge and fun.

You get exactly what you see with this game; a platformer with an above average idea done with subpar, flash game level execution. There is a total woping nine 3-5 minute long levels, all of which have 3 difficulties in which to scrape your teeth on. The gameplay is flat and mildly annoying, and the soundtrack is forgettable. Assets include lasers and red spike balls. You play as a cube with a dot that I assume is supposed to be its eye. The gimmick is that it grows while you play. This leads to some well executed panning out as you go through the levels, and can screw up runs on higher difficulties since you grow a bit faster, but other than that it's really just a gimmick. This isn't helped by the fact that these increasingly difficult levels all have a finite number of lives for you to play, demanding that the player master each challenge in a single level. This can lead to frustration, especially on the higher difficuties where "challenge" is presented through more spike balls to kill you. The janky camera also has a way of panning out at the weirdest times, and the level design doesn't follow any consistant pattern. Once again, there are only 9 levels. in less than half an hour I blazed through them without much trouble, and even got through a few of the higher difficulties before I just stopped caring. It seems the real motivation here is the leaderboards since that takes front and center, but the game as a whole does little for want to keep you around. A competant, yet depressingly mediocre game that does little to differentiate itself, Growing Pains suffers most from its lacking ambition and lacking controls. There are far worse games to pick up for 5 bucks, but unless you're really desperate for a platformer, this one you can pass on. Smudged Cat has done some pretty phenomenal games, so it's kind of sad to find a game so lacking in that same passion. Hopefully whatever stupor they're in they'll bounce back from, but Growing Pains is an example of squandered and lazy development, and that just sucks.

Pros: Fun Editor Strong community Unique Nice soundtrack Cons: Limited soundtrack

Aquí debajo pueden ver un pequeño video review (en español) del juego Growing Pains (junto a otros 2 juegos). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ivAu0xbga8

The main concept is you start small, and need to finish the level before you grow too big and ge crushed. As a premise, this game executes that very well. It puts you up against a time limit and various obstacles which provide a good enough challenge if you're trying to beat the highest difficulty. The 2D graphics are by nomeans anything to write home about, but I think they work well in this game, as they need to be easily visible from many sizes and anything too complex might be difficult to see. The controls are pretty good although the way the 'ball' you're controlling works can take a bit of getting used to. Overall, this is a ncie twist on the standard platformer fare, but would have been nicer with more levels.