Whilst many indie devs contact me about their incremental games, I’ve decided to limit myself to just one a month. They are too similar and too automated to hold my attention, and I am not being fair to the genre. I had hoped Growing My Manhole would be different. It takes the idea of Hole.IO and turns it into a level-based incremental game. Whilst there is visual dopamine aplenty here, the age-old problem of incrementals without skill requirements comes in, stinking like a sewer. Allow me to explain my personal juggle with this title.
Across 25 levels, you’ll be growing a manhole cover in size, with its insatiable appetite for anything it can find on screen. Each level brings a bigger object, from people to cars to buildings to mountains to planets and the galaxy itself. A level is complete if you fill up your XP meter before your hunger meter reaches zero. Each level makes the hunger meter deplete faster, and it acts like a level timer because very little in the game (early on) slows it down. Each run takes anywhere from 5 to 25 seconds to complete, and then you’ll be bounced to the skill tree to level up your manhole. The usual upgrades are available, such as size, hunger (time), movement speed, and a magnet pull. Later on you’ll be able to spin off a few other mini-manholes and unleash golden objects to gobble up, too. Whilst well themed, its nothing we haven’t already seen hundreds of times before.
Where Growing My Manhole missteps for me is that very quickly, you’ll realise there is no skill involved. There are so many objects on screen (another upgrade you have to boost) and their respawn rate is tied to the upgrade tree in such a way that you cannot progress faster than the skill tree allows. It doesn’t matter how you waggle your mouse to collect all of the objects, you’ll run out of steam at almost the exact same place every time untill you unlock specific upgrades that open your glass ceiling. The balance of upgrades is a bit wonky, too. Late game progression speeds through like a missile, with some levels taking only a few seconds to clear on your first attempt, only to spend 15 minutes grinding on the next one because that object needs 10 upgrades unlocked to respawn quickly enough to beat the hunger meter depletion. For a game with a saucy title, it feels like the skill tree babies the player too much. This lack of skill requirement is a personal bugbear with incrementals, and the main reason I switch off from them. At least Growing My Manhole is a 2.5hr experience and doesn’t drag on. There is also an idle mode if you’d rather just watch the game play itself.
There is one other element to the game I’ve not shared, and its the booster cards. As you play the game, you can collect booster packs of cards. These bring various power ups, but become quite trivial over time. Their animation takes too long, the menu so sort through them feels unorganised and difficult to navigate, and the whole system feels cumbersome and convoluted. Each card increases one or two stats, but decreases something else. It might help you shortcut the game by 15 minutes but that’s about it. It’s a feature of this games’ design: flashes and big bangs on screen, but little substance behind it.
Whilst there’s lots of colours and effects on screen, the actual gameplay felt hollow. If you don’t mind incremental games without skill requirements, and you only want to see visuals get bigger and better like a number going up, then Growing my Manhole will suit you better. For me, I wanted Hole.IO with structure and skill involved. If you do too, then Donut County, or even the scrappy indie title Fill My Void is a better pick.
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