Grow Guerrilla: a roguelike farm-defense shooter

Grow Guerrilla is an arcade sky-defense game built around one rule: the season ends the moment your last plant is destroyed. You play Farmer John, standing on the roof of a painted bus with a gun, while choppers, paratroopers, crop dusters, jets, blimps and eventually flying saucers try to wreck the crop planted in front of him. You aim by dragging your thumb across the sky and fire by holding it down. That's the whole control scheme, and it's deliberately small so the game fits a phone held sideways in one hand.

The depth comes from two places. The first is gun heat. Every shot warms the barrel, and when the gauge fills the gun jams for a moment — usually right when a paratrooper is about to land. Fast guns jam in seconds if you never let go; slow, heavy guns cool in the gap between their own shots. Managing that rhythm is the core skill of the game.

The second is the roguelike build. After every cleared stage you pick one of three skills from a pool of 55, and elite stages and bosses hand out relics — 18 of them, called Jah's Blessings — that bend the rules of the run. Combine the right ones and a run that started with a modest machine gun ends with a screen-clearing machine. Your strain (six of them) sets the archetype, from the glass-cannon Sativa Haze to the plant-healing CBD Medic.

Between runs, everything feeds a long progression loop. Each season pays out Gold Bud, win or lose, which you spend in the Grow House on permanent perks, 50-level weapon upgrades, new strains, guns, relics, crew members and cosmetic bus liveries. Five chapters take the same 12-stage season to new places — a dusty desert, a smugglers' coast, the city outskirts and a midnight mountaintop — each with tougher patrols and bigger rewards.

It's also a satire, and it knows it. Babylon's police state hunts one stubborn farmer with an entire air force, and the game plays that absurdity for laughs with reggae-inflected sound, a procedural dub soundtrack and art that's drawn entirely in code. It's made for adults, it's fictional, and it's about shooting down aircraft, not about anything you could do in real life.

We built Grow Guerrilla for players who love the "one more run" pull of roguelites and the planning of tower-defense games, but want something that plays in short, one-thumb phone sessions and works without a connection.

1. Gear up on the loadout screen. Pick a chapter (The Homestead to start), a strain and a weapon, then tap START. A normal season uses one can of bus fuel; the tank holds five and refills one can every 15 minutes.
2. Defend the crop. Drag to aim and hold to fire. Watch the heat gauge under your plant pips in the top-left corner, and let go between waves so the gun is cool when the next one arrives. The HEAT × number beside the stage counter is the stage's difficulty, not your gun.
3. Draft after every stage. On the "Jah provides" screen, pick one of three skills, or spend 12 buds on a reroll. Buds drop from enemies and only last for the run.
4. Visit Jah's Shop. After stages 3, 6, 9 and 11, spend buds on extra skills, a relic, a plant heal or a replant, or a weapon battery that adds a second auto-firing gun beside the field.
5. Beat the boss at stage 12. Clear elite stages 4 and 8 for guaranteed relics along the way, then take down the season boss to win.
6. Spend your harvest. The summary screen pays Gold Bud for every run, plus a bonus for a win. Spend it in the Grow House, claim finished missions, and go again. Beating a chapter's boss unlocks the next chapter.

Want the details? Our beginner's guide explains heat, plants and Gold Bud with real numbers.

Grow Guerrilla is free to download and play. There are no forced or interstitial ads: every ad is an optional rewarded video you choose to watch for a bonus. Optional purchases live in the Market tab, which appears after your first couple of finished runs.

Grow Guerrilla is a single-player game that runs entirely on your phone. There's no registration or login, and we don't operate a backend that receives your data. Your progress — unlocks, upgrades, statistics, settings and purchase entitlements — is saved in the app's private storage on your device, and the game plays fully offline.

The only data processing happens through optional Google services. If you choose to sign in to Google Play Games, you get achievements, leaderboards and a cloud save of your progress tied to your own Google account; the game receives only your Play Games player ID and display name. Rewarded ads are served by Google AdMob, and no ad is loaded unless you tap an ad button; where the law requires it, you'll see Google's consent form first. Purchases are handled by Google Play, so we never see your payment details.

The app requests a single Android permission, internet access, which is used only for those optional services. It's intended for adults and isn't directed at children. Read the full Grow Guerrilla privacy policy for details on retention and deletion.