Growing My Manhole by SylDev is (unfortunately?) exactly as its title implies: you play a manhole that grows by eating the objects around it. Things start small, with pebbles and stones, but before long you’re consuming cars, buses, and skyscrapers. By the end of the playtest, my manhole had evolved into a gaping, cosmic monstrosity the size of planet Earth.
The game’s simple premise involves swallowing up as many objects as you can before your manhole’s ‘hunger’ meter runs out. Then, it’s off to the upgrade screen to make your hole bigger, move faster, and suck better. Individual runs rarely lasted longer than 10 seconds, which I felt was a touch too short for me to really enjoy the effects of my upgrades, but there’s no denying the loop is addictive. Before I knew it, an hour had passed and I’d reached the end of the playtest, which teases planet-sized objects to stuff your hole with.
Much like its empty hero, Growing My Manhole started out small. A 40-minute demo of the game first appeared on itch.io in March and became a surprise hit after it was picked up by indie-focused content creators. Then, the game was picked up by Singapore publisher GearByte Games following a succesful appearance at Indie Jam 2026.
The game’s offical Steam app page promises the full version will have 25 objects of increasing size, with the ultimate goal of eating the universe itself. That’s a big manhole.
