My adorable little robot protagonist, B.U.D. stands at the
top of the world, admiring the results of his arduous journey. Like Jack with a
magical beanstalk, I’ve created this world with B.U.D., resulting in an
overwhelming, beautiful web of vines, leaves, and flowers. This is my B.U.D.’s
world, and by extension, my world. I fed it, sculpted it, and grew it into a
beautiful home. But it isn’t B.U.D.’s home, it’s simply meant to be a vessel
for returning to his actual home, some faraway planet we never see. The double
entendre of Grow Home’s title, however, is that by the end of this experience,
the world you create feels like a home.
It feels like his home.
Grow Home begins on a beach island in the middle of an
impassable sea. B.U.D. can’t swim, but he can climb. And he needs to get back
to his spaceship. His mission is simple: bring a star seed to the spaceship to
teleport it back to his home planet. B.U.D. can’t fly though, so his best hope
is to grow a massive plant through the sky, all the way to his ship beyond the
atmosphere to deliver his findings to home base. That’s the basic objective of Grow
Home: grow the plant as tall as it will go.
Along the way, Grow Home provides pit stops on floating islands
in the sky, each with its own little surprises and toys to play around with.
These vary from caves with unexpected animal encounters, plants that launch
B.U.D. into the sky, leaves that catapult him across the map, and even
antagonistic plants that try to trap him and chop his adorable frame in half.
It’s a malleable, guided tour through a strangely cosmic and organic
playground.
That playground is constantly rewarding your curiosity. As
you explore, you’ll need to grow the star plant and collect crystals, which are
embedded in any quiet corner of the various floating islands. As you collect
crystals, you earn upgrades to B.U.D.’s jetpack and you’ll collect single use
items like a leaf that he can use as a hang glider to navigate the twisting
network of vegetation. The verticality of Grow Home provides opportunity for
terrifying falls and last-second saves.
Grow Home is difficult to equate to other 3-D platformers,
however; there are no boss fights, no forced running segments, no timed
challenges and very few jumping obstacles. Grow Home is all about climbing and
exploring at your own pace. Indeed, the game may have found its roots at
Ubisoft’s Reflections studio as a proof of concept for use in the publisher’s
big AAA franchises, but it works on its own. B.U.D.’s arms control
independently with the left and right bumpers, allowing him to scamper up the
vines and around the many perilous cliffs scattered around the sky.
The minimalist polygonal animation on display is one of the
most striking visual styles I’ve seen in recent years. The dynamic lighting is
used to great effect; the viridescent ever-ascending plant takes on whatever
hue is cast upon it, be it the purple of a starlit sky or the orange of a
setting sun. Grow Home often looks like a prettier version of Minecraft, as
filtered through Super Mario Galaxy and it’s absolutely breathtaking for it.
B.U.D. is a slippery little guy though, which can often be a
cause for frustration as checkpoints are fairly scarce. This makes those long
falls from the top all the more terrifying, and all the more frustrating.
Likewise, once the novelty of the climbing mechanic wears off, the hike to the
top can become tedious, especially towards the end, when the islands you must
explore are spread a fair distance apart.
The developers seem to have anticipated this, however, and
have provided many shortcuts that players could easily miss if they don’t
experiment and explore all of the game’s options. I found it helpful and fun to
ride a growing vine to a higher perch or launch B.U.D. onto higher platforms
via the aforementioned catapult leaves. Exploring this ever-changing world and
growing it to your liking isn’t part of the fun of Grow Home, it’s all of the fun of Grow Home.
That may not sound like everyone’s cup of herbal tea leaves.
Personally – to use a terrible pun – the game really grew on me and once it
planted its roots, grew into something far beyond my expectations. By the end,
I was delighted with what my little B.U.D. and I had grown together; an organic
playground, alive with possibility and surprises. Grow Home is a charming,
colorful and strangely addicting quest that I highly recommend for all ages.
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