In the wave of the current trend of gaming, it’s hard for even the smallest things to go unnoticed. Both AAA games and Indie developers are getting the same publicity in this age of everyone being pretty popular. However, there are sometimes sneaky games that fly right under the radar for people, and in most cases, those games are better off not touched, for they’re hidden for a reason. Fortunately, though, a simple mystery presents itself, as a wonderfully creative gem of a game can go completely undetected as it slips into the fortress of the game industry, and it’s unknown why more people don’t see the cute thing. That is, thankfully, what Grow Home is.
Developed by a small team of 8 at Ubisoft, Ubisoft Reflections, Grow Home’s development story started as a tiny pet project, meant only for internal eyes as an experiment for procedural animation and generation. Eventually the higher-ups heard about it, and decided to make their little test game into an actual game for purchase. Now, the game isn’t blown out as a gigantic ultra-epic AAA mind blowing game, but rather released as pretty much what the test was like, and that’s where Grow Home shares its never-ending charm.
Getting into the actual plot of the game, the story takes place in outer space, where an unspecified planet is looking for fresh, green plants on other planets to oxygenate their homeworld. They eventually find the biggest plant they can, known as the Star Plant, on a planet full of floating sky islands and interesting life. They then send down B.U.D., a Botanical Utility Droid, to collect the seeds. The player takes control of this robot as he tries to get the Star Plant to fully bloom to grab the seeds and take back home. And that’s it. After the whole slew of epics that grazed us this past fall, seeing something this simple but charming premise about finding plants for oxygen is a breath of fresh air, no pun intended. B.U.D. has no backstory, no complicated sub-plots, has no part of any secret government conspiracy to keep the humans in space for no particular reason (Thanks Wall-E for that one), it’s just a robot grabbing some plants. Writing about a game’s story like this is refreshing, since I don’t have to dive too far into character psyche when it’s just a robot. And that’s exactly the reason I like Grow Home’s premise. It’s something simple, something you don’t have to consult Professor Layton to make sense of, and something that puts charm ahead of spinning a giant yarn.
As said before, the object of the game is to make the Star Plant grow all the way back up to your ship and collect the Star Seeds that the plant blooms. Don’t be swayed by the game’s straight-forward objectives and relatively short play-time, as this game will test your skills in ways you didn’t expect. To make the Star Plant grow, you have to travel across big land-masses and find the trunk of the Plant. Afterwards, you have to reach the Star Shoots on its stem, of which you have to guide as they grow into particular sky islands to receive nutrients to grow the main body. After connecting the Star Shoots on every island at that level, which corresponds with its altitude, the Star Plant will grow to the next segment. Rinse and repeat 2 more times and the game is over (except for the postgame of collecting other Star Seeds on the planet). Now the more I explain, the more simple it sounds and I would infer that you think it’ll be easy pickings and not worth your time. However, the true charm and challenge of the game lies not in its depth of objectives, but the brutal honesty of an upfront challenge of climbing that tall monster with only your two hands…well, claws.
B.U.D. isn’t exactly a multi-function super robot. The adorable little droid has two arms that can grapple onto any surface on the planet, bar-none. No special marking or situational area necessary, if you feel like being a mountaineer with some serious brass, then you can do just that. B.U.D. has no such thing as a stamina meter or a gradual sense of fall damage. Basically, so long as you don’t fall straight onto solid ground without a means to grabbing onto something or slowing down, you’ll be just fine. But B.U.D.’s endurance was not in the mind of whoever built him, as whatever endangers him will rather disturbingly make him fall apart with one hit. The thing is though not a lot kills you in this game. So you got a game which has a character with no limitations outside of small endurance in a relatively unhostile planet as a video game. What does that give you? A game with no distractions that tells you to just climb. And that’s what makes Grow Home so much fun.
Getting to the core of the game, the climbing is where it’s at. B.U.D.’s arms operate individually with the triggers, left and right corresponding with the correct hands. His arms simply move with the camera to have whatever you’re facing the first thing that B.U.D. grabs. As said before, the little robot can climb on any surface without any sort of stamina or limiting gauge that would cause you to limit how much leniency you can have with scaling this botanical nightmare. While these gauges would present critical thinking and careful planning in other games, Grow Home’s blunt exclusion of such devices as these is almost telling you to just forget about all that complication and just have some good ol’ death defying climbing fun, and it works perfectly in its favor. The only thing that adds challenge, but can also be a bit hard to work with is B.U.D.’s inherent slipperiness. Granted, this problem hardly affects gameplay as, again, the robot can grab onto anything to stop himself, but it can be a bit difficult when he slides off a tiny island. Speaking of which, along with the player’s freedom to move and climb however he wants comes with a critical drawback. One slip-up, one little misstep, and B.U.D. will fall off whatever you were trying to climb for forever, and if you can’t stop yourself by grabbing onto a passing sky island or piece of Star Plant, you can fall all the way back down to the beginning. Thankfully, though, B.U.D. has been given teleporters for him to activate as he locates them, in case you meet with accidentally grabbing a loose rock in place of solid surface (that happened to me quite a few times).
Although B.U.D. wasn’t given much for his descent onto the surface, you’ll come across a few items that will work in his favor. There are multiple plants that have different uses, ranging from a flower that lets you gently glide to a stalk that acts as a catapult. Secondly comes the Crystals, which are scattered around the planet for B.U.D. to collect to upgrade yourself with things as a wider camera view, a limited jetpack, etc. There are 100 of those little suckers, so you’ll have to do some classic collectable grabbing to get all 5 upgrades. However, at Grow Home’s center is gameplay meant for just giving you a blunt challenge, of which is harder the further you ascend with the Plant.
Getting into the graphics of the game will be a little hard to discuss, purely on my own end. The game’s performance was well, considering the improper setup I have (which is a Godsend), and the art style for the game, while I’m sure is also less labor intensive for both the developers and the hardware, lends itself to a very unique and charming style, of which is necessary these days to last within a week of release. It certainly isn’t the most graphics-intensive game I’ve seen, but the art style makes up for it all, with its polygonal design and very colorful palette. Considering the recent pushes for better looking gaming, a game that wants to rely more on its style is a nice change of scenery.
Grow Home, while not exactly the huge game to be playing for the next 28 years is the definition of a wonderful surprise. With its initial announcement a mere two weeks before its release date, this game easily captivated me with its straight-forward design and unique art direction. The only more shocking part is the fact that I had this much fun at a mere $7.99 expense. With only B.U.D.’s slipperiness and short game length as the problems with the game, and at that tiny price, Grow Home is without a doubt not only a fantastic surprise start to Ubisoft Reflections’ solo work careers, but also to 2015 gaming itself.
To mark the end of the 2010s, Eurogamer is celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years.
"Grow Up is a unique game and it can be very interesting but the game has a lot of technical problems"
Natalie from WGTC writes "Grow Up's got some significant technical problems, but if you can work past them, prepare for a fun and free experience."
thanks for your input
input for your thanks
For your input thanks !
i really love the games gfx.. the dynamic lightning really brings life to the world.. specially at knight when terrain is lit by B.U.D's soft head lights and objects cast individual shadows from both the light coming from the moon and B.U.D's.. this really impressed me