Grow Home

1. xdgdf

   Feb 5, 2015

   10

   The game is full of creativity,аll very high quality painted,аmazing visual style. Good jokes. Very pleased.Another great game fromThe game is full of creativity,аll very high quality painted,аmazing visual style. Good jokes. Very pleased.Another great game from Ubisoft,would recommend.… Expand

   • 8 of 13 users found this helpful
2. kraenk

   Feb 10, 2015

   10

   Lovely and lighthearted game which really should be featured on the front page of Metacritic. The game is alittle short but one can hope forLovely and lighthearted game which really should be featured on the front page of Metacritic. The game is alittle short but one can hope for future extensions. Adorable game, please try!… Expand

   • 2 of 7 users found this helpful
4. plotlesviolence

   May 15, 2015

   9

   OVERALL - 9
   The first great climbing game since Shadow of the Colossus, except it's a short 2-hour tech demo. I hope the company puts theseOVERALL - 9
   The first great climbing game since Shadow of the Colossus, except it's a short 2-hour tech demo. I hope the company puts these mechanics into a full game with multiple levels.
   
   PRESENTATION - 7
   Simplistic untextured vector graphics, almost voxels except not boxy. It's colorful and it gets the job done, and there's a nice tradeoff of the day-night cycle where platforms are more visible in the day but the hidden collectibles glow so they're more visible at night. It's also really cool to look down at the level and see the intersecting collections of vines in a shape you individually have drawn on your way up. Audio is bleepy but fine. The story is just a few dialogue boxes here and there, mostly your robotic ship "mother" praising you no matter how poorly you perform. Lots of grabbable objects (including moving animals) have physics, and a few trees even bend on impact. Animation is procedurally blended with your movement speed and collision with obstacles, which looks cool, but even with the floating limbs there are still errors where you collide through objects.
   
   CONTROL - 10
   Grow Home is a platformer, the goal of which is to ascend the level while collecting gems that upgrade your abilities. You start out with just a jump, earn a little jet boost to slow landings, and eventually a functional jetpack.
   You also climb by holding down either shoulder button to "grab" with left and/or right hand. While holding onto a surface (ANY surface in the game, including moving animals), the left joystick can hoist you up about the distance of your forearm. So by alternating left and right hand-holds, you can climb anything.
   Other games have climbing, but it's always handled the way FPS games handle ladders: attach-to-ledge-and-move-left-or-right or attach-to-climbable-wall-and-move-up-or-down. Other than "Shadow of the Colossus" and "I am Bread", I can't think of any other videogames where climbing is an actual gameplay mechanic (certainly not any of the Assassins Creed games, by the same company, which I don't feel qualify as platformers because they lack a dedicated non-context-sensitive Jump button).
   Bizarrely, there's no "cost" to climbing. SotC and IaB both have "grip gauges" that deplete and refill when you're on level surface, but in "Grow Home" it's almost impossible to fall unless you have a brain fart and forget to hold down one of the grab buttons. The motivation to take risks like make jumps is based around climbing simply being slower than other forms of travel.
   Additionally, you can collect either a flower (depleting parachute) or a leaf (a reuseable hang-glider that lasts until you crash), the latter of which controls incredibly well and speeds things up greatly.
   In the level are giant vines with sprouts. Once you climb on the sprout, you can activate it, at which point it will grow, and you direct the growth upwards towards more floating islands to get more gems or into glowing power sources which are necessary to grow the main tree trunk and complete the game. Each new vine comes with leaf bounce-pads and more sprouts, so you can grow yourself a path essentially anywhere. And once you master the gameplay mechanics, you can travel across the bounce pads much, much faster than running, or teleport to the top of the map and hang-glide down.
   
   DESIGN - 6
   The goal of the game is to activate the flower at the top. You can die from un-slowed falls or the water at the very bottom, but there are checkpoints you can teleport between and an instant-respawn. The problem with the game is that it feels like the first level of a much larger game that hasn't been released yet. You have a ton of abilities, especially once you're halfway upgraded, but the game never becomes hard enough to really challenge you. For example, you can land in the bending trees to slow your descent, or use the bendy tree recoil to launch you even higher, but you never actually need to. It's as if the entirety of Mario 64 was limited to "Bob-omb Battlefield." You have to make your own fun to an extent, like trying to grow vines out to the limit of the map, or trying to make difficult jumps without using the hang glider. If the purpose of "Grow Home" was to sell me on the gameplay mechanics as tech demo, then, congratulations, I love it, now where's the full game? Where's the challenge? The only real motivation to play well is either to find 100% of the hidden gems or to try and ascend as quickly as possible without making mistakes like accidentally running off a vine and falling. And yes, that is fun, but I wanted more. Admitedly, the game is very cheap. You get much more than your money's worth, a truly excellent 2-3 hours. What I'm really saying is please, please, please, make a sequel.… Expand

   • 1 of 4 users found this helpful
5. SuperkenGaming

   Jul 10, 2016

   8

   Grow Home
   a charming and floaty experience...
   Grow home is an open world platformer where you play as a robot named B.U.D. Your missions inGrow Home
   a charming and floaty experience...
   Grow home is an open world platformer where you play as a robot named B.U.D.
   Your missions in this game is to grow this giant bean stock like star plant up to your home base in order to oxygenate the planet you’re on..
   You grow this star planet by riding star shoots to energy rocks...
   Star shoots are buds that grow on the star plant as it grows…
   And you get to controls these, which I didn’t know I could do until the final stretch of the game...
   Needless to say I was frustrated with the seemingly meaningless and random star shoots going all over the place…
   Only to find out I’ve been playing the game wrong the whole time…
   Once I figured this out this game became much less frustrating to me... but not completely unfrustrating…
   The controls in this game are far too floaty...
   your robot character feels completely weightless…
   You rely mostly on your grip by using any of the 4 shoulder buttons to control a separate arm….. and even that isn’t all too reliable
   Bud would constantly slip when I jumped from stock to stock, leading me to fall to my death only to respawn at my most recently activated checkpoint and climb again. And again... and again...
   This weightless feeling needless to say greatly hinders your platforming experience as you have no idea where you’re going to land after a jump and you seemingly have no control of your character once in air...
   Thankfully you do get a jet pack and are able to pick up leaves and flowers to float… but these items don’t equalize the floatyness of the platforming and can sometimes even add to the frustration of feeling no control…
   The jet pack will definitely become your best friend as you’re screaming at the screen for constantly cheap feeling deaths due to the platforming and grip…
   you can upgrade this jetpack by collecting crystals throughout the world..
   To eventually be able to completely fly around at no risk by the games end... making collectibles in this game actually worthwhile… and the world is intriguing enough to want to explore in search of new caves and other secret areas…
   you can also grab items and animals that inhabit the planet to work towards unlocking a special skin…
   There are 2 special skins in this game that give an added perk beyond pure cosmetics
   One for collecting all of the creatures and plants... and one for doing the bonus mission after you complete the game…
   … The issues with this is the complete the game part…
   What’s the point in keeping special perk skins to when you’ve already completed or nearly completed the game…
   Why bother to collect everything and have the ability to make star shoots grow twice as long when I’ve got a jet pack that never runs out of fueled by that time?
   It’s pointless…
   This is also one of those games that doesn’t auto save and it did crash on me and I lost all progress...
   thankfully it happened after I collected everything and beat the game and not while I was on my way to doing so…
   so be cautious.. save and quit frequently, which won’t really cross your mind as this game is only about 5 hours long
   Grow Home is a charming game that I ultimately enjoyed.. But its floaty controls tried really hard to stop me…
   I give grow home a
   7.5/10… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
6. sscott0829tw

   Mar 3, 2015

   8

   Grow home is an extremely beautiful game,
   the fantastic art style makes you revel in this gorgeous world of floating islands.
   The gameplayGrow home is an extremely beautiful game,
   the fantastic art style makes you revel in this gorgeous world of floating islands.
   The gameplay is simple and fun,no need for tutorial,you will know what to do.
   A fine masterpiece from UBI… Expand

   • 1 of 4 users found this helpful
7. Tomxike

   Aug 20, 2016

   7

   After seeing that a sequel has been made and is now out on game store, I immediately want to try out the prequel. Now, the game's beautiful.After seeing that a sequel has been made and is now out on game store, I immediately want to try out the prequel. Now, the game's beautiful. And the atmosphere, everything sound just right. It has a simple story about a robot name's BUD and he's trying to plant a tree into space (sounds awesome right o_0?) while also trying to collect the plant's seed in order to analyze it. The game mechanics is fun at first, but then can be devastating at times, because if you fall down without having been to the nearest checkpoint you're gonna have to climb back and it takes time and it can be really boring. So if you want something to play to kill time definitely check this out!… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
8. Zer0TheHer0

   Jul 21, 2015

   0

   could be a decent game, but the lack of keyboard binding options makes it absolutely unplayable. the lack of rebinding options is absolutelycould be a decent game, but the lack of keyboard binding options makes it absolutely unplayable. the lack of rebinding options is absolutely lazy and something that is not to be tolerated in this time and age.… Expand

   • 5 of 19 users found this helpful

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