What’s the go with Grow? + AvCon

I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while. A lot of people have been asking “what’s happening with Grow?”, “where’s the demo at?” and “will you make this game more like Spore?” Well I’m going to answer all those questions right now 😀 The answer to the last one is no.

Grow is developed by a team of four people in our spare time. We don’t make money from Grow so we work part time on the side; the classic indie game dev story. Despite that, we’re making good progress on the game and it’s shaped up a whole lot since last year’s demo at PAX AUS. We’re getting very close to an alpha release, but there’re a few things we need to work out first.

Grumble - 2013 v 2014

Progress! Hooray!

Steam release

Our plan is to release Grow on Steam Early Access, either with a free demo or a free period to begin with. This way you’ll get a chance to experience the game and decide whether it’s worth buying and supporting. We want to reward people who support the game early on, so the alpha version will be much cheaper than later versions and will hopefully come with some cool, exclusive stuff.

Those of you who frequent Steam though would have noticed that there was just a massive sale. You will also have noticed – if you’re anything like me – that you spent all your money on said sale. A big part of releasing on Steam is releasing at the right time and we’ll definitely need to wait a bit to escape the post-sale decline in purchases. Everyone needs time to restock their wallets!

Steam Sale

It’s ok, I didn’t want all that money anyway.

AvCon

The other delay is the game still needs work. One of the most important things we need to do is test the game and to help with that we’ll be attending AvCon later this month!

AvCon is a big gaming and anime convention in Adelaide running from the 18th to the 20th of July and we’ll be demo-ing there. We’ll even be getting on-stage to run some competitive games of Grow and giving out prizes (more on the prizes later). So if you’re heading to AvCon make sure you stop by and say hello! If you’re not up to travelling to South Australia though, we’ll be running the competitive games online, which means we’ll be grabbing some fans to join in from home. We’ll also be giving out prizes to the at-home players.

Having so many people play Grow and give us their opinions at PAX AUS was both motivating and massively helpful and we’re hoping AvCon will be just as useful in ironing out the kinks before the Steam release.

AvCon

AvCon runs from the 18th to the 20th

Conclusion

Never fear! The Grow alpha is a-comin. Until the release though, look forward to big updates and your chance to play the game for prizes.

What are you guys hoping to see in the competitive game? What do you reckon we should do on stage at AvCon? We’ve been preparing an interpretive dance routine but we think it might blow too many people’s minds.

Make sure to comment below with any thoughts, questions and suggestions!

 

Posted under: Front Page, Grow Development, Studio Grow News

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