Eat Will Grow was one of those "hey, it's temporarily free so let's grab it" type downloads. As it turns out, I'm glad I did. The premise is simply to last as long as you can before colliding with what I would describe as a mine. Along the way you'll collect rings for points, but the rings will cause you to grow over time (it's sort of like the old snake game except you grow bigger around rather than longer). You can also collect a power up that will temporarily either speed up or slow down the flow of the game. I thought there were a couple of times that I shrank in size as well, but I'm not sure if the power up or something else caused that.
To control your ball with eyes you can either use the accelerometer (supposedly) or use touch control. Dragging your finger will cause the ball to follow, while large swipes will cause the ball to move quickly - or at least more quickly than dragging - in the direction of the swipe. I'm not real keen on the touch control because you're often blocking your view of the ball, but at least it works. When accelerometer control is on your ball jumps all over the place and you can't control it. Finally, if you have a Twitter account you can twitter your high scores (along with a picture of your score submitted to twitpics). If you're connected to the internet when you load the game, the high score table will be reloaded from Twitter - this happens even without a personal Twitter account. It's a novelty thing for sure, but as a proud Twitter-er I thought it was pretty cool.
The graphics are simple but pretty cool looking. Your character is basically a green ball with eyes. The rings sort of remind me of green spaghettios. The cool thing about the rings is the different patterns that they get arranged in. It often feels like you're swimming through DNA strands. I also think it's pretty neat that if you rank in the top 100 scores, the game's icon will change to reflect your ranking. Sound effects are basically limited to a voice saying "slow down" or "speed up" based on the power up that you collect. The music isn't great, but what is cool is that it adjusts based on collecting a speed altering power up. If you're one of "those" kinds of people, though, the developer was kind enough to add the option for you to listen to the music you already have on your device.
At its normal 99 cent street price, Eat Will Grow might not be the best bang for your buck. However, despite its simplistic nature it is highly addictive, and the desire to want to rank in the top 100 will quickly overcome you, even if you don't have a Twitter account. I would definitely recommend this if it ever does the "temporarily free" price drop, but even at 99 cents it's worth it for the "just one more time" playability.
Final Score: Recommended
App Store Link
