Sprout Parade tips: save every sprout and beat par

The leader does the work

In Sprout Parade the sprouts drop from the pod one at a time and follow each other. Across all 61 recorded solutions there are 182 skill uses, and 149 of them go to the first or second sprout out of the pod. Leave out Climb and Puff, which each sprout keeps for itself, and it's nearly every job: stairs, planks, tunnels, burrows, springs, signposts and turns go to the front of the line.

That's not a coincidence. A sprout working at the front changes the ground for everyone behind it, and the followers simply walk the path it made. So in almost every level, your plan is about one or two sprouts. The rest are the parade.

We checked what happens if you hand the same jobs to the third sprout instead, at the same spot. Only 41 of 59 levels still passed, and just 23 reached gold. The two sprouts ahead of your worker walk into whatever the level had waiting before the path was ready.

Timing is tighter than it looks, so pause

We took every solution and delayed every move by a little. At the Classic pace, a delay of under a second was enough to break more than half the levels: only 28 of 59 still passed. Delay every move by under two seconds and just 12 passed.

The fix is built in. Tap pause, pick the skill and tap the sprout while the world is frozen. You can hand out skills while paused, so there's no reason to race your own thumb. If you'd rather keep things moving, the Relaxed pace in Settings slows the walk down. And the recorded solutions make their first move early, half of them within about six seconds of the start at Classic pace, so look at the level before the first sprout lands.

Stairs have a window, not a spot

On Step Right Up, the first stairs level, we tried giving Stairs earlier and later than the recorded move. Everything from a little under a second early to about a second and a half late saved all ten sprouts. Outside that, nobody made it: too early and the stairs end short of the ledge, too late and the sprout bumps the wall before it's high enough.

So you don't need to be perfect, but you do need to be in the window. The faint ghost bricks show where the stairs will go before you commit. If the top brick doesn't reach the ledge, wait a step. If the sprout is already close to the wall, it's too late, and rewind is your friend.

Counting skills: gold and par

Par is how many skill uses the third star allows. In 32 of the 61 levels, par equals every use the level gives you, so there's nothing to spare and every skill has a job. In the rest you get one or two extra, and on average a level hands out about 3.6 uses with a par of about 3. If you're using everything and still short of gold, you're probably solving a different puzzle than the one the level is built around.

Gold is usually every single sprout. In 51 of the levels it's the full parade. In the other 10, a sprout or two has to be spent along the way, often the one that plants a Spring and walks on into trouble.

Signposts are a pause button for the crowd

In 14 levels the solution puts up a Signpost and later gives that same sprout Turn, which packs up the sign and lets everyone go. The pattern is always the same: the sign holds the crowd safely while the leader builds something ahead, then you release them once the path is done. If followers keep walking off the end of unfinished stairs or into water, this is what's missing.

Climb and Puff are per sprout

Climb and Puff stay with the sprout that gets them, and nobody else learns them by following. That's why levels like Up and Away hand out one of each for every sprout and expect you to use them all. You can give both the moment a sprout lands, so there's no timing to worry about. Just don't skip anyone.

When you're stuck

• Pause and follow the leader's path all the way to the door before you give anything.
• Plan for the first two sprouts. Everyone else follows.
• Use rewind or tap a marker on the timeline to undo one choice without losing the rest.
• If gold is less than the full count, look for the sprout the level expects you to spend.
• The Stuck? button gives a tip and can play the solution. A run that uses its moves earns one star at most, so you can still go back for three.

For every skill, world and the level maker, see the full Sprout Parade guide.

Questions