Grow Home should, by no means, be as perfect as it is.
It was a test game made for the people working at the studio to just have fun with that was then developed into a full title and released to the mass public. It's visuals are blocky, yet charming, it's gameplay is clunky yet workable and the overall tone is cutesy without being saccharine. It's very basic premise is as basic as premises come; you are B.U.D., a small robot whose entire purpose is to take seeds and plant giant stalks to reach your quite literal Mother Ship so you can go home. You can find upgrades, you can scan things, and it is really super straight forward.
So then why, despite all that, did it leave such an impression on me? Well, I for one am not your typical gamer. I don't care about visuals, I don't care about multiplayer, and frankly I love childlike wonderment stuff like this. I miss this sort of thing, so it had that going for it. But I think the thing that really hit home with me was that it comes across as so endearing, wholesome and sincere, and that's missing from a lot of games these days.
There's nothing negative in it. You're simply a cute little robot toying with plants whose mother ship is almost literally their mom and encourages and supports their progress and growth. It's the definition of wholesome. Perhaps that's why it hit me so hard, because while there's no real "plot" to speak of, the fact that it's wholesome to begin with is enough. The world has become a dark, dismal place full of awful horrid things (to be fair, it's always been that way, but it's become even MORE so), and so having small shining lights like this are just...wonderful. It's hope in a world that has none anymore. But it's also nice to be encouraged, even if its by a robot mom ship in the sky. As someone who grew up with parents who didn't encourage her whatsoever, who downright discouraged her in fact, seeing that sort of love between a parent and a child brings a warm feeling to my chilled dead heart. It gets to me like nothing else. This is why I like anime like Usagi Drop and Sweetness & Lightning because it's the same thing. It's making sure that the thing you're taking care of is okay and knows its loved, no matter what.
There's something to be said for wholesomeness. I've talked about that ad nauseam in my Slime Rancher review and more, but this is different, and it's because of that pseudo parent/child relationship. When a ship mom from a video game is more encouraging than your real life mother ever was, then something truly great has happened. I talked about the parent/child relationship when I reviewed Shelter as well, the whole concept of doing whatever it takes for your child to be happy and loved and, in that games case, simply survive. But there's no real danger in Grow Home. I mean, you can fall from thousands of feet up in the air and have to be repaired, but you never really "die" and nothing is ever actively trying to "destroy you". It's about literal growing pains. Learning through experience, figuring out how things around you work and then using them to your advantage, all while being told you're doing a fantastic job.
The fact that my mother was actually more robotic than a genuine robot in a video game made up of computer code is pretty telling.
I wouldn't even really call Grow Home a "game". Not in the proper sense of what we consider games to be. It's an experience. It's something you DO. We should all strive to be more like B.U.D. and work on building things instead of tearing everything down. We should all be like his mother ship and work on encouraging one another instead of destroying each other. I know, this all sounds incredibly out of character for your favorite cynical lesbian to be saying, but it's true. Grow Home taps into a universal feeling of love that I don't get from many other things. This feeling to do good, help others, make the world a better, more beautiful place, because in the end, it can make US better, more beautiful people. Don't worry. I'm not going to turn into an armchair psychologist spouting psychobabble using faux positive platitudes on a forum somewhere. I'm still incredibly depressed and I still believe the world is a dark, cruel place.
But every now and then...every now and then, it's nice to be happy. It's nice to fix things. It's nice to be encouraged.
Sometimes, as B.U.D. teaches us, you need to stop and smell the roses. Then grow those roses right into the fucking sky and into outer space.
