Growtopia

Growtopia is a 2D MMO sandbox video game in which almost everything in the game can be grown from seeds of trees.[6] There are no goals. However, there is an achievement system, epic quests, and other quests from NPCs.

A new player will be sent to a private world called TUTORIAL which teaches the basics of the game with an item called Growpedia for reading tips. The player starts out with two basic tools: a fist for punching and breaking blocks, and a wrench for wrenching items and edit items' properties. After a player finished TUTORIAL, they will be sent to START for learning more about the game.

Players can visit other people's worlds or create their own worlds. When a player creates a new world, the world will be procedurally generated. Worlds in Growtopia have the same size, except special worlds (such as TINY). Players can break and build blocks, get seeds or gems from blocks, plant seeds, and harvest trees. Players cannot do these activities if the world or the area they are punching is locked by someone else.

Players can lock areas they want by using different sizes of locks: Small Lock, Big Lock, Huge Lock, and World Lock (there are also other types of locks such as Diamond Locks, but works like World Locks). When a player has locked an area with a lock, the player can access other people to the lock or edit properties by wrenching the lock.[6]

In 2012, Seth Robinson began thinking about making a new game. At the time, Robinson made six mockup screenshots and sent it to Mike Hommel to entice him to help with the project. The game was named Buildo.

The game UI started to take shape with Hommel's mockups.[7] On October 22, 2012, Hommel uploaded a video on his YouTube channel showing the development of the game before its release.[8]

After three months of development, the game was released on Android as a free beta on November 30, 2012, under the name Growtopia. They moved the game out of beta and release the full version on January 9, 2013.[7] The game has been continuously updated since the release. On February 28, 2017, Ubisoft announced an acquisition of Growtopia, it was completed during Ubisoft's 2016-17 fourth quarter, with the original developers being design and general advisors to the game's continued development.[5]

The game can be played on multiple operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

The iOS version was released on January 11, 2013, after the Android version on November 30, 2012.[7] Following the mobile releases, the game was later brought to computers; a Windows beta version was released on July 9, 2013, and a macOS version was released on July 27, 2013.

Growtopia was also released for several consoles: the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, on July 19, 2019.[1][2][3] On April 27, 2020, however, it was announced that all of their console servers would be shut down on July 30, 2020 in order to "allocate all resources back to support the Mobile and PC version".[9] This decision had followed from a previous announcement on January 19, 2020, where it was announced that there would no longer be major updates or annual events on the console versions of Growtopia, as the PC and mobile versions were prioritized.[10]

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score GameRankings iOS: 70%[11] Review scores Publication Score 148Apps iOS: [12] Pocket Gamer iOS/Android: 6/10[13]

Growtopia received "mixed or average" reviews from professional critics according to review aggregator GameRankings.[11]

Video gaming website Jay Is Games described the game as "simple and easy enough to work on the mobile platform (and be fun for kids), but with enough room for customization and socialization".[14] 148Apps gave the game a 4/5, saying "the crafting mechanic is unique".[12] Pocket Gamer's Peter Willington scored the game 6 out of 10, said he dislikes the crude menus, the UI is bland and cramped and hates the character design.[13] TouchArcade wrote "With online games like this that take place in persistent worlds where everyone can interact, you’ll no doubt get some people trying to destroy things and generally make life tough for everyone else".[15]

The first official 'Growtopia' merchandise is a T-shirt. The t-shirt, called "Into The Game" was released on Amazon on October 17, 2018 with various sizes, five colors: black, asphalt, cranberry, kelly green and brown.[16][17] On November 26, 2018, a premium version of Into The Game T-shirts were released.[18] Ubisoft also released "Emerald Lock Premium" T-shirts on the same day.[19]

GrowCon is an official meetup dedicated to Growtopia. The first one was held on April 21, 2019 at Max's Restaurant in Quezon City.[20] It was limited to 30 invited people from Facebook groups and Growtopia forums community. The event included photo booth printing, bingo type game and food with in-game contests.[21] Since the last GrowCon there has been held another GrowCon which were held between the 24th and 26th October, 2019 at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre in Abu Dhabi.[22]

• Official website