Games / Strategy Games / Sprout Parade / Guide
Sprout Parade
Sprout Parade is a puzzle game about a parade of small seed folk who walk wherever their feet point. You can't steer them directly. Instead you hand out skills, one sprout at a time, so the whole crowd finds its way to the round burrow door.
Quick answers
Does Sprout Parade work on my phone?
Yes. Sprout Parade works with touch on phones and tablets, and with a mouse or keyboard on a computer. It runs in the browser you already have, so there is no app to download.
Do I need an account to play Sprout Parade?
No. Just open it and play, with no sign-up. If you like, a free account (username only, no email, for players 13 and older) puts your scores on the leaderboards and backs up your progress so it follows you to any device.
Is there a daily challenge in Sprout Parade?
Yes. Sprout Parade has a new daily challenge every day, the same one for every player, with its own daily leaderboard. Find it alongside the others on our daily challenges page.
Does Sprout Parade save my progress?
Yes. It saves on this device on its own, so you can close the page and pick up where you left off. Sign in with a free account to keep the same progress on your phone and your computer.
Is Sprout Parade OK for kids?
Yes, players of any age can enjoy it. There is no chat and no way to message other players, and nobody needs an account to play. Accounts are for players 13 and older, so younger players just play and their progress stays on their device. For ages 4 to 11 we also have learning games in their own kids area, with no ads, no accounts and no tracking.
What is Sprout Parade?
Sprouts drop one by one from a hanging seed pod and start walking. They step over small bumps, turn around at walls, and happily wander off ledges, into ponds and onto thorns. Your job is to get enough of them home. Each level gives you a small set of skills with a fixed number of uses, and you decide who gets what, where and when.
It's free and plays in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with nothing to download. Nobody gets hurt, either. A sprout that falls too far or touches thorns poofs into sparkles and drifts back to the pod garden, and one that steps in water floats off in a bubble.
How to play
Pick a skill on the bar at the bottom, then tap a sprout. The game picks the sprout nearest your finger and highlights it before anything happens, and a faint ghost shows what the skill will do: where the stair bricks will go, how deep a dig will run, where a spring will throw everyone. Let go to commit.
The counter under each skill shows how many uses are left. The level ends when every sprout is home, lost or standing as a signpost. Bring home at least the number shown at the top and you pass.
The nine skills
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
| Climb | Kept for the whole level. The sprout walks straight up any wall, but a ceiling knocks it back off. |
| Puff | Kept for the whole level. A dandelion puff opens when the sprout falls, so any drop is safe. |
| Signpost | The sprout stops and holds up a sign. Everyone who bumps into it turns around. |
| Stairs | Lays 12 bricks going up and forward, six cells high in all. If the sprout bumps a wall it turns round and rests a moment on its top step, which is the calm moment to give it Stairs again. |
| Plank | Walks on until the ground ends, then lays a flat bridge up to 11 cells long. No timing needed. |
| Tunnel | Walks on until it meets soil, then digs straight through. Stone stops it. |
| Burrow | Digs straight down until it breaks through. Stone stops it. |
| Spring | Plants a bouncy mushroom, pats it for a moment, then walks on. Every sprout that steps on it after that is thrown forward in a high arc. |
| Turn | The sprout turns around at once. Give it to a signpost and the sign holder packs up and walks the other way. |
Soil can be dug, stone can't, and bricks and planks count as soil once they're down. A sprout can safely fall about 16 cells. Anything more needs a Puff or something to land on.
Controls (phone and computer)
- Tap a skill, then tap a sprout. In a crowd, a magnifier shows exactly who you're about to pick.
- The pick button cycles who gets picked first: Any, Left (sprouts walking left), Right, or Idle (sprouts without a job).
- Pinch or use the mouse wheel to zoom, drag to look around on big levels.
- Pause any time and keep handing out skills while the world is frozen.
- Fast forward cycles 1x, 2x, 3x and 6x. Rewind steps back three seconds, or drag the timeline to any moment.
- Every skill you used appears as a marker on the timeline. Tap one to undo just that choice and keep everything before it.
- Too quick, or too slow? Settings has a Pace choice: Relaxed, Classic or Brisk. Classic is the default and a calm walk.
- On a keyboard: 1 to 9 pick a skill, Space pauses, R rewinds, F speeds up, Q changes who gets picked, and the arrow keys move the view.
Stars and par
Every level has three stars. The first is for bringing home the number you need. The second is for the gold target, which is usually every single sprout. In a few levels a sprout or two has to stay behind or be spent along the way, so gold is a little lower there. The third is for reaching gold while using no more skills than par.
We checked every level by playing a recorded solution through the real game, and each of those runs earns all three stars. If you get stuck, the Stuck? button gives a tip and can play that solution for you. A run that still uses its moves earns one star, so the full set is yours to find.
Levels open in order, but you can skip one: a level unlocks when either of the two before it has a star.
After a win you can watch your run back at any speed, or share it as a link that opens the level and plays your exact moves for a friend. The level card also keeps your best run, so you can watch it again later.
The seven worlds and the challenges
| World | What it teaches |
|---|---|
| Dewdrop Meadow | Burrow, Stairs, Signpost, Turn and Plank, one at a time, then a short parade that needs four of them |
| Windfall Orchard | Tunnel, Climb and Puff, then stacked stairs and a cliff you shorten yourself |
| Rootway Hollows | Spring, plus digging through layers of soil and stone underground |
| Pebble Shore | Pools, rocks and high banks, where each tool fits one kind of water |
| Frostberry Hills | Fewer tools and trickier ideas: going the other way, riding a dig down together, zig zag stairs |
| Firefly Dusk | Two pods at once, long levels and the full set of skills |
| Puddlewood Grove | Bounce mushrooms, switch plates and gates, wind and hollow logs, one at a time, then all together in the rain |
| Bloom Trials | Four challenge levels: one of every tool, a race against the clock, and two puzzles with fewer tools than problems |
Mushrooms, gates, wind and logs
Puddlewood Grove adds four things you don't hand out but have to work with. Each gets a short demo card the first time you meet it.
| Thing | What it does |
|---|---|
| Bounce mushroom | A Spring that grows there on its own. Every sprout that steps on it is thrown forward in a high arc, the way it was walking. It never wears out, so sometimes the trick is keeping sprouts off it. |
| Switch plate and gate | A vine gate is as hard as stone until any sprout steps on the plate with the same coloured knot. Then it opens for good. Falling or bouncing through the plate counts too. |
| Wind | Streaks of wind push anything in the air sideways: falling sprouts drift a little, puffing sprouts drift a lot, and a bounce goes further with the wind behind it. Sprouts on the ground don't notice it. |
| Hollow log | Walk into one end and pop out of the other, still facing the same way. Logs work in both directions, so watch which way the crowd is walking when it reaches one. |
Golden seeds, hats and badges
Many levels hide a golden seed off the obvious path: behind the pod, high in the air, close to the thorns. Any sprout that touches it picks it up, but you only keep it if you win that run without help from the Stuck? button. Some seeds fit in a three star run. Others cost a skill or a star, so you may want one run for the stars and another for the seed.
Seeds unlock hats for the whole parade in the sticker book (the Hats button on the title screen), from a leaf cap at one seed up to a party hat at 20 and a golden crown when you have them all. Badges, like Boing Boing for 100 bounces, unlock new parade colours at 3, 6 and 9.
Daily level and leaderboards
The daily level is the same for everyone each day and resets at midnight UTC. It's a mirrored copy of one of the puzzle levels, so even a level you know plays fresh. Your score counts the first time you bring enough sprouts home, or when you choose to end a try. If the crowd doesn't make it, rewind and keep going, because nothing is posted yet. Daily score is 100 points per sprout home, 25 for every skill use you didn't need, and a bonus of 150 for two stars or 300 for three.
There are two boards: daily for today's score and best for your total stars across every level, three per level.
Level maker and the Featured Level
Tap Make on the title screen to build your own level. Paint soil, stone, ramps, water and thorns, place the seed pods and burrow doors, then set how many sprouts drop, how many must get home and which skills the player gets. The More tools add bounce mushrooms, switch plates and gates, wind and hollow logs. Tap Test to play it, and share it as a link that opens straight into your level. Custom levels don't earn stars or post scores.
Every week one level made by a player becomes the Featured Level, credited to its maker, with its own leaderboard. To send one in you need to be signed in and to beat your own level first, because your winning run is the bar everyone else plays against: gold is the number of sprouts you saved and par is the number of skills you used. You can send up to three levels a week. Wins on the Featured Level are checked by replaying them on our server, and it scores the same way as the daily level. Past picks stay playable in the Hall of Fame, and a maker whose level is picked gets an inbox note and the Featured Maker badge.
Tips and strategy
- Pause first, look second. Most levels make sense once you follow the path a sprout will take all the way to the door.
- Stairs need a run up. Start about ten cells before a ledge that is three or four cells high. Start too close and the sprout bumps the wall before it gets high enough.
- Followers walk right past a sprout laying stairs and off the unfinished top. Over thorns or water, put up a Signpost behind it and Turn the sign holder once the stairs are done.
- A spring throws sprouts the way they are walking, so a spring can send a crowd left as well as right. The planter pats its mushroom for a moment before walking on. Turn it then, and it comes back later and bounces too.
- To zig zag up a narrow chimney, give Stairs, let the sprout bump the far wall and turn, then give Stairs again while it rests on its top step.
- A mushroom that throws the crowd the wrong way can be dodged: turn them before they reach it.
- Plates don't have to be walked on. A sprout falling, puffing or bouncing through one opens its gate, so a single brave Puff can open the way for everyone.
- Wind only touches sprouts in the air. Plant a Spring so the bounce goes with the wind and it clears a much wider gap than usual.
- A sprout that pops out of a log ignores that log end until it has taken a step away. Walk back over it later and in it goes again.
For what we learned replaying every level, read our Sprout Parade tips.
Winter Lights holiday event
From November 23 to January 4 our Winter Lights event covers the ground of every outdoor world in fresh snow and sends flakes drifting down while your sprouts march. Tap the snowflake badge on the title screen for three winter goals a day, like bringing 40 sprouts home or earning 3 stars on a level. Finish six and you earn the Bobble Hat, a red knit hat your sprouts can wear (pick it under Hats), and it stays yours after the event. Winter goals never change your stars, score or the Daily level.
Questions
Is Sprout Parade free?
Yes. It's free in your browser on phone, tablet or computer. There are no ads, no lives and no energy timers.
How many levels are there?
57 hand made levels in seven worlds, four challenge levels, and a new daily level every day.
Can I make my own Sprout Parade levels?
Yes. Tap Make on the title screen to build one, test it and share it as a link. Signed in players can send a level they've beaten to be picked as the weekly Featured Level.
Is every level solvable?
Yes. Every level and every daily level was checked by replaying a recorded solution in the game itself, and each of those runs gets all three stars.
What are the golden seeds for?
They're an optional extra. Keep a seed by touching it in a run you win, and new hats open up for your parade in the sticker book.
What happens to sprouts that don't make it?
They poof into sparkles or float off in a bubble and drift back to the pod garden. Nothing grisly.
Does Sprout Parade need fast reflexes?
No. You can pause and hand out skills while everything is frozen, and the game runs exactly the same way every time, so a plan that works once always works.
