Grow Island

Grow Island is one of those Flash games that was built based on a simple concept but is rather tough to crack/finish. The idea is that you have an empty volcanic island and you must build a small civilization on it by accessing a series of technologies in a specific order without ,making the volcano erupt.

See a world evolve according to your technological choices

Clicking some stuff to make other stuff appear on an island sounds simple enough but what you need to understand here is that the order in which you do so counts the most. For example, choosing to research electrical engineering before you have civil engineering might not have the same effects if you started off with CE, architecture and then electrical.
Each one of the panels is described with plenty of details in a way that explains the connection between them and how they can influence the development of what already exists. It’s a really tricky thing to do and if you know your basic math, there is a terribly large number of possible combinations when you start with 8 constants that are actually variables.

A fun way to learn how a civilization might evolve through time

Every panel you click adds a structure or something similar to that on the island. Depending on your choices, these evolve and change form. For example, a small house can turn into a futuristic skyscraper, a simple battery morphs into a powerful energy station and a simple dirt road ends up being a system of roads and railways.
The game is rather tough to define, it’s somewhere between a neat puzzle game and a city building simulator.

Out of all the Flash games out there, this one is really nice

It might not look like much, but Grow Island is really interesting, or at least the idea behind it is. Having to deal with so many combinations leaves you curious to find out how some things change if you apply them in that order or in another.
It’s a really nice way to spend a good couple of minutes.