Grow Home!!!

The post is about a game called Grow Home. It's a cute, short game where you play as a robot (yes!) named B.U.D. (Botanical Utility Droid).


LOGO!!!

B.U.D. is an adorable robot that is very clumsy but still lovable. It/he also is procedurally animated. Basically that means B.U.D.'s animations for doing anything are never the same. He might do a roll after a jump, or do a flip while trying to move objects out of the way.

B.U.D.'s mission and sole purpose in life is to nurture a giant beanstalk-esque plant (called the "Star Plant") to maximum size. To make it grow taller B.U.D. has to take some of the Star Plant's branches and connect them to floating islands. The branches themselves are massive, and can be used as platforms.

By the way the only way you could die in this game is if you fall off the Star Plant. Like this...


Have fun free falling!

Anyway, why is B.U.D. nurturing the Star Plant? To get a Star Seed to grow more Star Plants. Why? Because he is a BOTANICAL UTILITY DROID. He was BORN to grow giant plants. Or built? My Point still stands.

Back on track. B.U.D., despite his clumsiness, is a master rock climber. And that brings me to a gameplay mechanic. You control B.U.D.'s arms individually (left trigger makes B.U.D. grab things with his left hand, right trigger makes B.U.D. grab things with his right hand, etc).


B.U.D.!!! Pro rock climber!!!

B.U.D. is almost constantly being affected by rag-doll physics (making him look even clumsier than before). This is cute, but be careful when you jump as you will jump insanely far thanks to rag-doll physics. By the way I love physics.

Also, the max height of the Star Plant is 2000 meters, which is rough 6000 feet if you do not use the metric system (and you should, it makes measurements easier).

You can also collect energy crystals to upgrade B.U.D. (Jet-packs, super zoom-in/out, etc). Oh, and B.U.D. Can also glide using giant flowers and equally giant leaves (leaves are better because flowers deteriorate as you use them and eventually become useless, while leaves can be used an infinite number of times)

And finally, this game has beautiful graphics. It's a minimalist style consisting solely of geometric shapes but it still looks amazing.

You can get this game on steam, and you can play the game with a Xbox 360 controller even though it was not officially released on a Microsoft system.

For more info go to a wiki. I have not found a wiki for this game besides IGN's wiki guide. So hopefully you can find a wiki yourself.