There's a certain kind of freedom in not having your parents in your life, especially when it comes to mortality, something one has trouble facing well enough in regards to their own, let alone those around them. And while the world is, admittedly, extremely lonely without parents, it's more of a blessing than a curse. If Grow Home was about getting back to M.O.M. after a brief period of exploration - much like a child leaving on their own and returning later - then Grow Up is that very same child now facing the uncertain future without the one who cared for them.

Okay, okay, I know. It's a game about a robot who likes plants, and okay yes M.O.M. isn't dead, she's just busted apart and needs to be repaired, but for the sake of my work let me run with this analogy, alright?

The world of this franchise is, and I say this with the upmost respect I can muster for a franchise, absolutely perfect. Its visuals suit it well, its music and sound are beautiful and the game plays better than most triple a titles with similar mechanics could ever hope to. It's bright, it's upbeat, and despite the fact that you're literally attempting to Frankenstein your literal mothership back into one cohesive piece, it's a very positive and uplifting (in some cases literally) game. So why do I feel so bad when I play it?

I guess it's because, as I stated before, I don't have parents.

I mean, I have parents, I couldn't exist without them otherwise. I'm not some sort of fucked up experiment from a weird lab, who gained sentience and managed to escape into society, unfortunately. But I don't have parents, if you know what I mean. There's an odd feeling when it comes to semi intentional orphanhood, let me tell you.For one thing, you still feel guilty for not celebrating mother or fathers day, even if you haven't spoken to either mother or father in years, because society proclaims that our parents are the most important people in our lives, whether they abused the hell out of you or not. So it isn't like you're not celebrating because you have no parents, because they died, but because you actively chose to cut them out of your life. In a way, it's sort of a constant state of grief and mourning. Mourning for a family you deserved but weren't given. Grief over having to make such a hard decision at the expense of your own personal health.

Running around as B.U.D. and collecting M.O.M.'s pieces is cathartic, in a sense, for someone like me, if only because this mom actually treats B.U.D. - and by extension the person playing as him - as someone she actually cares about. Whether she was programmed to care or not doesn't matter, nor is it ever brought up anyway, what matters is that all my mothers are fictional, and the world is extremely cold and dark because of it. Is it sad that I'm having an emotional reaction to a stand in for a motherly figure? Probably, yeah. But it's all I've got.

And, like B.U.D., in order to survive, I've had to continually grow stalks I can climb, in order to continue my upwards progress to betterment. Like B.U.D., I am extremely childlike myself thanks to my arrested development and my brain damage and my autism, but unlike B.U.D., I don't have an actual mother to attempt and piece back together again, and even if after all these years of no contact she'd asked me help, I wouldn't do it, because she never once helped me. Is that selfish? I suppose one could argue that all self care is inherently selfish, but there's varying degrees of selfishness, really. True selfishness is putting yourself before others because you simply think you're better than them, for example taking the last piece of pie at desert. But self care is a different kind of selfishness, a more acceptable kind of selfishness, a more understandable sort of selfishness. It's selfishness is contained in the idea that you're putting yourself before others because you genuinely deserve to be treated better. Not better than someone else, simply better in general.

So am I selfish for my self care? Maybe. Do I care? Not one bit.

Grow Up and its former title Grow Home are virtually identical, except for one glaring difference: their overall tone. In Grow Home M.O.M. willingly sends you to the planet to explore, and discover, because that's what a child - even a robotic child - is meant to do. In Grow Up, however, B.U.D doesn't have a choice and is thrust into this world and forced to make it on his own, much like many children are forced to do, and while helping put his "mother" back together. The games, otherwise, are the same. Oh, sure, Grow Up certainly has sequel tendencies, there's no denying that; a bigger more open world, smoother running, more finely tuned controls and a slew of new abilities for B.U.D. to access in order to accomplish his goal, but really, if you've played one, you've played both.

But that isn't a negative, for the record. If anything, the familiar is what makes it comforting. In both titles you're a tiny childlike robot with a wonder for the world around you, except in one you're exploring it for yourself, and in another you're exploring it to save the one you care about.

Far too many children - and granted M.O.M. does not come apart on purpose, nor is she pleased about it - are forced to face reality at far too young an age and help pick up the pieces of a family they've only barely been a part of, putting together people they barely know but are told are the most important people in their lives. B.U.D. is the cutest, most loyal little robot, and I'd be pleased as punch if I had the honor to be rebuilt by him. Hell, I'd even start a garden with that adorable little metallic cutie. Grow Up is the far superior title, there's no denying it, but you have to recognize that without Grow Home - a game in which B.U.D. is taught to explore - Grow Up wouldn't be able to exist, because B.U.D. wouldn't have the strength to continue exploring.

We should all be more like, B.U.D.