Growing Pains Review

Fans of Super Meat Boy should take notice of Growing Pains in the Xbox Live Indie Games section. It may not be as mind numbingly difficult as SMB but it offers some really fun, challenging platforming. While it may be on the pricier side of XBLIG games at $3, it is still a game you cannot pass up.

When I said that it isn’t as tough as Super Meat Boy, that doesn’t mean Growing Pains isn’t difficult. I saw the Game Over screen more than once and what Growing Pains does really well is that while it may be tough, it never became frustrating. Not once did I ever blame the game for being unfair and I always knew it was either me not surveying the area properly or just mis-timing a jump. 

The entire game of Growing Pains is set with a 2D world. You control a little fuzzball and must take him room to room collecting rainbow coloured objects. By nabbing all the rainbow objects in each room, you are allowed to advance to the next one until you finish the level. While the levels may seem short when you see that it only took 3 minutes to beat each one, it sure didn’t feel like it.

This is mainly because of a cool little gameplay feature where your character constantly grows. Basically, this means that you can’t meander around and go slow, you have to try to move as fast as possible or else your little character will get stuck and you cannot advance. Nearly every level gave me a rush because it became so intense.

Another nice addition they used was that sometimes you won’t be able to make a jump, so you’ll have to hold the right trigger to make your character grow so you can jump high or far enough to reach the end of the level. Not only did this add a bit of strategy to the game but it also meant that if you grew him too much, you would have to go even faster to reach the end in time. 

As with the majority of XBLIG games, your playtime with the game will be short. There’s only 9 levels at about 3 minutes a piece but I found myself replaying each level on harder difficulties to try to get the best time, repetitious music be damned. Only sad part was, there’s only 4 or 5 people on the leaderboards because not many people have bought it so I ended up fourth in the world. All I can say about that is, go buy this game and beat my time!

For $3, Growing Pains is an absolute must buy. Any fans of Super Meat Boy or just challenging platformers in general simply have to buy Growing Pains. While the game may be really short, you will still enjoy every minute you spend with this game.

Growing Pains was reviewed on the Xbox 360 with a copy provided by the publisher, Smudged Cat.