It doesn't do anything exceptional but strangely addicting. I was a little overwhelmed with everything it throws at you in the tutorial; however it does stay at a slow pace and easy to learn.

It's not indepth with the stat management or storytelling. Easy to pick up but also easy to become repetitive once you meet the characters.

It seems like a couple of the achievements are bugged so instead of spending more time repeating stories in hope they pop, I'll move on.

This game was oddly entertaining. It kept me occupied for the entire day. I really enjoyed the brain map portion. I only wish that the game continued after high school. You can keep playing after you grow up and your offspring will become the next generation, but at that point, it’s basically the same thing over again, so not as interesting. The achievements for the game require you to complete the stories of several different side characters, but I’m not sure there is any way to make sure that you get to interact with certain characters or not.

Now that I've collected all of the achievements, I'm finally free. Let's talk about Growing Up, shall we?

Growing Up is a game where you create a schedule for a child, so that they could grow up and be someone cool. Like a rock star. Or, maybe, the President of the United States. Pretty much anyone, really.

I first played this game on the Demo Festival, and I fell in love pretty quickly. My boyfriend, who was busy doing something else, stopped by for a few seconds while I was playing, and we spent the next hour together, discussing what skills should the child learn. We were basically encharmed.

And then I bought the game on the day it came out and played it until I had all of the achievements.

As you can probably tell, I liked Growing Up. I liked that the skill system and time management weren't very hard, but still gave me a little challenge. And I really like how many careers there are (42, to be exact), even though sometimes I didn't get the career I was striving for. Yeah, I'm remembering this time when I spent so many time learning the journalism and literature skills, and then the game decided my baby girl is going to be a dean. Still hurts a bit. Also there are a lot of skill trees to choose from, and that's also great. I liked how you can choose to learn complimentary skills, so that the next skill you need to buy is going to be much cheaper.

But of course, there are also stuff I didn't like that much. There are two main complaints, which I also see in other people's posts: character routs and parents' approval.

So, there's this system where you have to balance your mental health and your parents' approval. If you do fun stuff, you raise mental health, but lose approval. If you learn something or work, you lose mental health, but get approval (or at least don't lose it). And this system feels kind of broken, because you can try and balance school and fun stuff, but you can simply put all of your time into studying or working, and then spend your money on food which raises mental health — and that's much easier and more efficient (because you're not losing any time while also maintaining mental health). Maybe this strategy was planned that way, but it still feels broken. Also your parents seem like a bunch of ironhearted jerks, because all they do is demand you study and never relax. I mean, you could probably say it's just like real life...

The second thing that could be better is relationship routes. The game's description says that every walkthrough will be different, but that's a bunch of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, if you ask me. I mean yeah, there are 19 characters and you can read the whole route of about 6 in one playthrough. But the game feels repetitive, because you spend much more time creating schedules. And a lot of the routes are too boring, especially when it comes to the characters who can teach you extracurricular stuff (like journalism, cooking, etc.).

All of the other characters have more or less unique stories, and that's cool, but the choices. Oh Lord, these choices. Most of the time you need to choose whether you will act like a jerk to your friend or help them. And if you act like a jerk, the route will probably end very quickly, because you will lose your friend forever. Also I didn't like that a lot of choices are "skip school to help your friend or go to school". I mean, if you don't go to school, there's no punishment (the parents' approval is not lost at all), so why would I choose something that will most definitely finish the route? Ugh.

I hope in the future there will be a DLC with new characters and maybe new career paths. Right now there are not too many school friends, and I'm kind of tired of seeing Richard or Alex in every single playthrough. By the way, do you know how it works? On every school stage (elementary, middle, and high) you're given one friend, and each of the friends is tied to a certain stage. In elementary school you will only meet Richard or Alex, so they're going to haunt you if you do more than two playthroughs.

My rant is now over, thank you if you've stuck with me this far. Even though I concentrated on the weaker stuff, I still encourage you to play Growing Up. It's addictive, exciting to master and a lot of fun.

This game has value, at first, it seems just as a generic The Sims-esque game that will only scratch the surface, but it has a lot of choices and consequences that keep you at it.

But i must say that the awful soundtrack and the Bejeweled mechanic in those Exams are so dull, it doesn't make any sense.

The core in itself is very good, worth a shot.

copy/pasting my steam review lmao:
it's fun and the art is cute, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly. the gameplay loop becomes irritating after you've gotten used to the mechanics. i've spent at least half of my logged game time just trying to get all of the achievements, only to find out that the one i have left is bugged. i doubt this and other bugs will be fixed, since the game hasn't been updated since 2021 as of writing this.

f in the chat for me; this game will permanently be sitting in my library at 98% complete since i no longer have the willpower to try to get that last achievement :(

This review is based off of 2 playthroughs I've done so far. I plan to do more so I may edit.

It's a pretty simple yet nostalgic feeling game covering your character's life from when they're a baby to when they graduate from high school.

The gameplay loop is simple yet addicting, as it doesn't take too long to figure out the best ways to efficiently use the systems to max out your skills and stats, while keeping your mental health and parent's satisfaction meters at decent levels. Inbetween all this you get to meet and interact with different characters, and depending on what you do you can finish their storylines.

The writing is pretty decent. It's generally pretty lighthearted but effectively transitions to more serious topics or moodier tones when needed. The career related characters mostly discuss the fields they're in with you and are generally likeable; the writing really shines with the characters of your age group however, as you grow up with said characters and find out about them and their lives, befriending them and possibly even romancing them (or in worst cases, breaking off your friendship with them). The situations these characters tend to be in I either found relateable or at least knew people in real life that went through similar issues during my school years. Couple that with all the activites and figuring out your career path, it's pretty nostalgic, but at the same time kind of terrifying or dreadful. Though I guess that depends on what your school life was like.

Biggest flaw is probably the parents. The way the game handles them just makes them feel too controlling and there's hardly much noteworthy conversations with them; constantly having to meet their expectations is frustrating. It's not really hard to fulfill said expectations, but being forced to meet high expectations for most of my actual school life just made me despite this mechanic of the game lol. It's a little more disappointing too knowing that every playthrough after your first one, your parents can be the protag and who they married in your previous playthrough. Kinda just sucks the character out of them for the most part.

Overall, its a fine game. I liked it, might do some more replays for 100% completion. I loved the music and art, very much fits with that aesthetic of nostalgia it goes for.

I'm like 100% sure this game will get too repetitive to replay anymore once I've seen all the friendship routes, but the gameplay is also weirdly addictive? I enjoyed the nostalgic aesthetic and the diverse cast. The writing was also surprisingly good! A lot of these types of life sim visual novels tend to be really amateurish or even cringey in their writing and especially their dialogue, but I thought this was actually pretty well handled. It even managed to veer between a light, playful tone and serious, mature content with a deft enough hand. Though, to be honest, I went into this game blind and was kind of surprised just how serious the content is at points.

My only major criticism is that you have to play in a fairly specific way if you want to manage stress/parental approval. You really have to focus on earning money so you can buy stress relieving food, which you need to keep your stress low enough that you can do the bonkers amount of studying necessary to be fully prepared for your exams. I don't think the exams should have been easier, necessarily, but it would have been interesting if there were alternative good endings for less academics-focused characters. Also, the interactions with the parents were by far the most shallow part of the game. It's weird that I can have more dialogue with a random dude I met at the park than my dad. That said, I do think it's a cute detail that your character from the previous playthrough and their spouse are the next generation's parents.