Okay, this is actually one of my favorite games of all time now. It's the perfect "exploration/adventure" game. The mechanics are great. The Freedom is awesome. Absolutely NAMEBRAND.

Just wow. Right? This is probably one of my favorite games of all time, and it's definitely up there as one of my favorite Ubisoft games. You wouldn't expect that from such a "small" package, but really! This is top notch, exceedingly well done, and it's something that I'm going to be recommending to people for a long time. Just wow!

As a sequel to Grow Home... it's like they took that game and iterated on everything that made it good. Now, we don't have nearly as dizzying of heights, but the exploration, and the adventure therein, is some of the most top notch stuff you can find in the genre. I don't think I have ever seen a better "sequel" of a game really. The glider is such a welcome addition and the ball mode was so much more fun than you'd think lol. Traversal is stellar. truly the first Strand type game, lol.

The game is a bit short. But I find that to its advantage! I don't think this is something you sit down and binge in a session, but rather, it serves a great purpose for those short play sessions when you don't have all that much time. Or, maybe you're binging another game, and you need a break from the monotony of it. Grow Home can serve to fill those holes with some of the greatest gaming joys you can have.

The only minor issue I ever had was finding stuff (at the end game). There's not a compass that points you right to em, and even the crystal locator isn't as helpful as I'd like. But it's still fun. Still emphasizes the exploration and adventure. Shocked at how good it is for being a little 4 hour adventure. Will definitely be returning for years to come.

Beaten here means finished main story line... haven't collected all the crystals and barely did any of the challenges.

Grow Up meanders from the simplicity that was Grow Home. It's more of an open world, which is fine in theory, but as the glider lets you almost glide forever, at some point in the game it's possible to go to the highest point you've reached and just float past platforming.

There's more to do, but still has that not quite finished feeling that Grow Home had... but there's more stuff, so... eh.

É difícil dizer o que tem de errado com grow up, mas vou tentar.

O jogo supostamente é para ser uma melhoria de Grow Home, sendo mais aberto, com mais conteúdo, mais coisas a fazer, mais ambicioso... mas tudo isso acaba sendo meio falho em comparação a simplicidade do jogo original. Todos os eventos parecem menos importantes, o mundo não é tão bonito, a exploração é menos interessante, as habilidades fortes demais para necessitar qualquer tipo de estratégia.

Tentando ser melhor que o original Grow Up se torna um exemplo que as vezes mais é menos...

Contrary to popular belief, Ubisoft is actually really good at building convincing virtual worlds that are genuinely engaging to venture through. The main problem with a lot of their games, however, is that they’re designed around extraneous sets of obligations that the player has to fulfil rather than rewarding the exploration of their worlds in any meaningful way. In short, they tend to be a set of icons on a map rather than a map with content in it, and as such, playing through a lot of these games ultimately devolves into czeching items off a list. Somehow, Ubisoft Reflections managed to take Grow Home— a short, sweet, and linear game game about climbing up to the sky— and turn it into a bloated shadow of its former self that demonstrates this fundamental design problem better than almost any other game I’ve played. Grow Up isn’t a game with nearly enough substance to foster its open world. Part of what makes Grow Home so enjoyable is that it was short enough to make its minimalistic design feel worthwhile. There weren’t any items you had to go outta your way to collect, you were climbing up to the sky and discovering creatures and locations along the way that were interesting enough to pick up and examine. Grow Up takes this same philosophy and expands it into an open world where you have to collect everything across several mostly uninteresting biomes. B.U.D’s childlike, cluttered movement isn’t ideal for exploring an entire world, yet it is put front and centre in this game just like in Grow Home, but for a much longer and wider duration. Since this game shares DNA with its predecessor, it still has a sense of infectious charm for the first several hours, but its charm wears thin once the game stops being centred around exploration and starts being focused on collecting pieces around the bland world. That’s the primary problem with Grow Up, it’s built on a backbone of exploration, but its game loop is centred around clumsily walking across a world to fulfil an extraneous set of obligations. It is a Ubisoft open world without the strengths of Ubisoft’s world design. Grow Up is just the padding of an open world game, and if I wanted to experience that, I could just go to a grocery store I’ve never been to with someone else’s shopping list.

A pretty strong followup to the wonderful game Grow Home despite initially seeming as if it might have lost some of what made the original so magical. When I started the game and was greeted to this open world where the player was tasked with exploring a great deal of it, I immediately became concerned, as part of the reason the original game worked so well despite its simple gameplay loop was because of its brevity. Fortunately, it turns out that the game doesn't actually have its scope increased nearly as much as it seemed like it did, but instead it simply emphasises lateral movement above vertical this time around. While this leads to a different dynamic that stops the player from having to spend the vast majority of their time climbing, it's made up for by providing the player with a wide range of tools that allow them to cover massive distances remarkably quickly.

Very early on, the player is essentially given all the tools they need, and they all feel extremely powerful to the point of kinda trivialising a lot of the game, which works well for the comfy, serene experience that the game feels as if it's aiming for. The world is open and expansive, but there's never any real threats to be seen, you just get to explore this pretty sandbox for a few hours as you slowly collect the ship parts you need to beat the game. It's a game that's almost entirely lacking in challenge unless you aim for some of the optional content, but I don't see that as a bad thing when the game is clearly going for that more chilled out atmosphere, which would have been disrupted if it attempted to more overtly cater towards those looking for something a bit trickier.

While this game is a tad longer than Grow Home, I still got through all the main content in about 4 hours and found myself loving it every step of the way. I still think I prefer that game for the appeal of growing a plant to mountainous heights and exploring a series of mysterious floating islands, rather than this one being a bit more traditional in its presentation, but in any case, both of the games are extremely worth playing if you're looking for a comfy little game that makes you love the idea of exploring for exploration's sake. The fact that Ubisoft was able to make a duo of games that felt so strongly like charming indie games is incredible to me and I wish that they'd approach some more games of theirs with this sort of design philosophy in mind rather than solely aiming for their big AAA experiences.

While some would consider this worse than Grow Home, I personally love the changes they added. The game is incredibly open ended and you can do any objective at one time. This forces you to explore this pretty detailed world and uncover all of it's secrets.

Gaining upgrades was the most enjoyable time in my playthrough as it was so exiting to see how B.U.D would become even more powerful then before. Researching plants was also a joy as there was a massive variety in how they transport you. Both these points highlight how the movement in this game is incredible. There are many ways to go from point to point and this allows for experimentation.

Time trials were added as well to test your movement knowledge and skill. These were all a joy to beat because you would unlock a new costume which isn't just an aesthetic change. Combine this with the open world elements and you have a game that is quite a bit longer than the first game, taking me around 4 times as long to beat it.

Somehow I had never heard of these two games until summer 2020 but I'm glad I got to experience them.

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More of the same but much bigger and... better? Question mark because the game tends to set you up with oulandishly overpowered gear very early on, between abilities and plants that shoot you a mile up in the air, which make the climb to greater heights much more trivial than in the original if you only use the map correctly and keep your eyes (and ears) open for crystals at the start of the game. It focuses much more on using these overly helpful tools and much less on growing the Starplants, which were the core of the previous game and are here relegated to semi-optional features.

The vast majority of the other plants and some of the skills are downright useless as well: why use any plant other than the one that shoots you the most up in the air? Why use the parachute when you can tap your booster near the ground and achieve the same result? Why roll up into a ball when there is no area that even remotely requires it?

At that point you'll find yourself beating the game in an afternoon and then all that's left is completing optional challenges for cosmetics and achievements, in case you're into that. I'm not.

Still the same phenomenal game as before, but not as challenging, which detracts from the package.

(Escrito em 2016)

Grow Up é a continuação que Grow Home tanto pedia, já que o original era um joguinho tão pequeno e sem pretensões. Grow Up possui basicamente a mesma idéia de Grow Home, só que desta vez com mais horizontalidade e coisas para se fazer (a Ubisoft ama uma checklist e um minimapa). Para quem gostou de Grow Home pelos seus controles inovadores, Grow Up será um prato cheio que oferece um enorme playground e mecânicas novas a serem testadas; para quem gostou de Grow Home pela sua simplicidade, o jogo parecerá um engordamento desnecessário de uma experiência que já se mantinha muito bem. Eu, que amei Grow Home pelas duas razões, não sei o que pensar de Grow Up nesse quesito. Mesmo assim, me diverti bastante durante o tempo que joguei.