Grow Home

Grow Home is utterly lovely. It’s welcoming and sweet, and its simplicity is as elegant as BUD is adorably clumsy. Little experimental treats like this are worth a dozen Far Creeds and Assassin’s Crys.

Grow Home isn't awfully deep, nor does it provide any real story to hook you, but this game taps into the pleasure centers of seeing something and going there... however you may choose to do so.

Hopping through the floaty gravity and feel-good physics of Grow Home is as pleasant a gaming experience as they come.

Clever, pretty and endearing. [April 2015, p.63]

It's delightful to look at and even more delightful to explore. If Ubisoft wants to restore some goodwill with core audiences again, releasing lovely little titles like this is a step in the right direction.

Grow Home is a great "indie" game, even though it has a big publisher behind it. The thing is it does deliver things we only expect from indie games, like new mechanic, fresh experiences and light-hearted fun.

Ubisoft Reflections does highlight, staying small, with a concept that is short, but always enjoyable. The first surprise of the year conquers our hearts.

Grow Home is an interesting surprise from a publisher who got used to mismanaging its own IPs. This platformer-like-no-other has everything going for it and for a very low price tag. You can easily give it a try.

It's relatively short, but it oozes charm and personality.

As great as Grow Home can be, there is a bit of a tedious process in climbing a 2000m beanstalk and not falling.

Beautiful, cute and wonderful. Unfortunately also very short. [04/2015, p.67]

If you allow it, Grow Home will wrap you around its finger. An unusual platformer from the Ubisoft studio can charm with visuals, entertain and -thanks to its precisely set length- it can’t start boring you. The purity of design and old-school approach makes it an ideal candidate for the one or two night’s company.

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises is that Grow Home only costs eight dollars, which is a bargain for such an intriguing and inventive little game. Whether you’re spending your time scrambling to out-of-reach grottos, enjoying the view from your glider, or harassing the sheep, Grow Home is well worth the climb.

No matter how prone to cynicism you may be, you shouldn’t let this surprising gem go unnoticed.

Despite not doing anything big or particularly new, Grow Home is an enjoyable, compact experience that knows what it is and offers it in a neat little package.

Grow Home is a welcome new addition to the platforming genre thanks to the new ways it asks of players to control the character and think about the way they should traverse the world.

Grow Home ticks all the right boxes for fun and escapism on the PC in this enjoyable arcade sandbox title.

It is great to see this experiment by Reflections make it as a game. We love experimenting in Grow Home, which means exploring the environment, figuring out what plants need and checking out heights only an assassin could dream of.

You should be left feeling bubbly after playing Grow Home. It's not perfect in execution, but given it was never meant to be a commercial product, it's easy to see why Ubisoft couldn't resist turning it into one - it's a bright, charming and original little game that has an irresistible sense of happiness to it.

There are no deep story and complex gameplay mechanisms in Grow Home, but playing the game is just a lot of fun.

Phallic imagery and sore wrists don’t stop this from being uniquely charming. Definitely worth a few quid and a few hours of your time.

While its intoxicated physics can lead to occasional despair, the overwhelming joy of the whole experience is a strong tonic, over the handful of hours it takes to get through, I couldn’t help maintaining a smile.

If indie gaming is just a state of mind then Ubisoft is getting increasingly good at encouraging it in their developers, especially in this novel plant-based platformer.

Grow Home takes your breath away... but just for a few hours. As long as it keeps growing, it's a nice, little and smart game. Then it suddenly stops.

Either you like that kind of game with creative gameplay or you thin it's a pure waste of time. It's hard to judge by the usual criteria.

Ubisoft surprises but doesn't convince with this experimental new project from the creators of Driver San Francisco. It falls too short despite its good ideas.

Grow Home is a new little gem by Ubisoft studios. This robot is endearing, and the giant plant that arrives at its home grows with style. You will love this short experience (2-3 hours).

Grow Home is like a raw diamond, and as such it must be treated. It's original, fun, and intriguing, but it needs a little more polishing.

This is a rather short trip into a strange alien mountain range – but an entertaining one nonetheless.

Ubisoft knows how to surprise when decides to experiment, and Grow Home makes no difference. Is clearly not a solid project as Valiant Hearts and Child of Light, but its simplicity, combined with a colourful look and interesting ideas made us appreciate it a lot.

Grow Home introduces an innovative mechanic and fun gameplay to go with it. The game is too short and does not offer a lot of replay value. It does not stay fascinating.

Unlike a lot of other Ubisoft games Grow Home never overwhelms you with needless side-quests that go nowhere or watered down game mechanics. It's just you, a giant beanstalk, some floating islands and a little robot that can scamper up basically anything. It's a simple and fun little experience that definitely deserves to be played.

Grow Home is fun and innovative experience that, unfortunately, gets weighed down by bugs with the climbing system, the iffy camera, and the repetitive audio effects. It's still a blast to play but it could've been much more.

Grow a plant, try to climb it, and enjoy the view... Grow Home is all about the pleasure of discovery. Take your time and enjoy the road, up to the top, where M.O.M. awaits you.

More an experiment than a fully accomplished videogame, it can still entertain with its ethereal gameplay. The only drawback is the entry price, way to high for what the title has to offer.

Grow Home's got a huge potential, but at the same time it's limited and lacks polish.

Grow Home is a better experiment than a game.

Grow Home isn't the masterpiece you'll hang on the wall, it's the vase of tulips on the coffee table - appreciated at the time, but forgotten once they wither. [Issue#159, p.90]

Its appearance is intriguing, I’ll give it that, but appearance doesn’t make it any less tedious or frustrating. I noticed on Metacritic that several people have loved it, but for me, it was absolute torture.

The use of procedural animation and rag doll physics for a protagonist may pay off some day down the road once the idea has been refined. In this game, however, it usually just gets in the way of what is otherwise a charming and colorful platformer.

Grow Home gets high points for creativity and providing a relaxing, almost meditative, experience. Except, the game is designed around a mechanic that's often more tedious than fun, and uses a robot that's prone to random spasms and collapses. Still, it's a nice distraction from action games.

There’s a lot to love about Grow Home, and if controlling Bud was one of them then this would have been a truly fantastic adventure instead of the flawed platformer.

Not every release needs to have ridiculous triple-A aspirations. That being said, even considering its limited scope, Grow Home doesn’t feel complete. The technology behind the gigantic plant is cool, and seeing it take over the world below you is interesting. However, the game that you play between those realizations rarely blossoms into entertainment.

Ultimately, Grow Home ends up feeling like a product you really want to love, but is unable to produce the content required to hook your attention.