[7] Growtopia is a 2D massively multiplayer online sandbox video game based around the idea that most of the in-game items can be grown from their corresponding seeds.

Players can also gather gems from breaking blocks, harvesting trees, and other activities, which can be used to purchase items from the in-game store, including locks, which have the capability of restricting certain areas to their owner.

Production of Growtopia started in 2012, when designer Seth Robinson made six mockup screenshots outlining the premise of the game of which he originally called Buildo, and sent it to Mike Hommel to entice him into helping with the project.

[9] During initial development, Robinson and Hommel brought in the help of composer Cory Mollenhour to produce Growtopia's soundtrack.

The game can be played on multiple operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android.

An Ubisoft Abu Dhabi team member stated that since there were "many, many more players playing on Android, iOS, and PC", they were going to focus their resources back towards those platforms.

[16] TouchArcade wrote "With online games like this that take place in persistent worlds where everyone can interact, you’ll no doubt get some people trying to destroy things and generally make life tough for everyone else".