Eating
Eating is a very important part of Grow. In order for the creatures to grow and gain the ability to attack and capture eggs, they must eat.
To start with, a critter is in 'slug form' and is only capable of moving and eating. Fortunately, eating is simple. Players only need to move their creature to the food for the creature to eat it. After eating enough food, a player grows from slug form to 'creature form' and finally to the powerful 'beast form'.
There are three types of food: meat, candy and fruit. Meat is attributed to 'power', candy to 'speed' and fruit to 'skill'. What type of food a creature eats most will determine what it will grow into. For example, eating a lot of meat will cause a critter to grow powerful; transforming into a larger, stronger creature. On the other hand, eating candy with cause a creature to get faster, becoming more streamlined and agile.
Grow features three levels of growth, therefore players need to eat more food after they grow the first time if they hope to become as strong as they can be. Moving from creature form to beast requires much more food than moving from slug to creature and requires more searching and collecting. Once again, the type of food a player eats determines what the critter will become in its third, beast level. However, the third form is also affected by the previous form. See evolution pathway.
There are three sizes of food: small, medium and large. Each size gives a different amount of 'stomach points' that are required to fill the stomach meter and cause the creature to grow. In slug form, a creature need only eat 5 points worth of one type of food to grow. In second form, the creature needs to eat 10 points. Small foods are worth 1 point, medium foods are worth 3 points and large foods are worth 6 points. Large foods are generally very difficult to find unless you explicitly search for them, being found in hard to reach places that branch off from the usual level pathways.
- NOTE: Point system is subject to change for balancing needs.
When a creature dies it hatches from an egg back at the base and reverts to slug form. It must then begin eating again to grow. This growth restart acts as a replacement for respawn time, which is a feature in almost every multi-player battle game.
An additional feature that we hope to include if time permits is a 'vomit' button. Pressing the button causes the creature to vomit and revert back to its previous form, allowing players to eat different food and grow differently.
