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So yeah. Grow Home. It's a short-ish(took me ~5 or 6 hours to beat) game from a small team in Ubisoft Reflections that is just innocent climbing, exploration, and putting animals into teleporters.

 

The premise is, you're B.U.D.: Botanical Utility Droid, and you've been put on this planet that has a Star Plant on it. Your job is to help grow this plant(by connecting its Star Shoots to energy rocks) beyond 2,000 meters, so it can finally flower and bloom.

 

It's got charming music, a nice art style, procedural animation, and just feels super original, fresh, and lovely. It's also $8, and does not require UPlay, so if any of the words in this post appeal to you, you really oughta play it. I 'beat' it today, but have a ton more to do, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day.

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I've been hearing this game mentioned quite a bit in the past week. It surprised me to learn that this is from the team who made the Driver series.

 

I know literally nothing about the game, but after seeing the trailer, I love the low poly visual style. 

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I just played two hours of this and it's so good! I think Ubisoft's previous attempts to "go indie" have been really disappointing, but this game really hooked me :D

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Thanks for posting this. I knew nothing about it and it looks like my kind of thing.

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My coworker Luigi was trying this out during lunch break yesterday, and a big crowd gathered behind him to watch. A lot of cheering, ooohs and aaahs, plus plenty of laughter at the hilarious IK driven animation on BUD. The game is short and sweet, and just oozes charm.

I'm also really happy to see the faceted polygonal style catching on. I've seen plenty of artists experiment with it, so it's cool to finally see it make its way into games. Massive Chalice does it too.

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The term "Procedurally Generated Animations" is on the Steam page. Doesn't that just mean that animations are determined by interactions with other objects (i.e. physics) instead of an actual animator? Or is there something more to it than that?

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That is what it means. It's probably a little bit of both, so you're not reliant on pure physics to move around (which would be a nightmare). You can see the little robot walking weirdly on stuff, and moving weirdly when grabbing, climbing, etc.

 

Like I imagine physics-wise, it's the usual capsule-character type of movement, or maybe a little more fidelity than that, but graphics-wise, it uses techniques to make it so the feet are always flat on the ground and such.

 

(I realize on re-reading that I didn't directly answer your question but I probably answered enough? Maybe? I hope?)

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I saw this pop up on Steam and my first thought was "Grow Gone Home." If it's getting recommends here I'll end up checking it out.

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I super recommend it. If this had come out in 2014 it would've definitely been a top 10 of the year for me, it's special, has more charm than everything but Necrodancer from 2014 put together, and is the most innocent thing I've ever played. It nearly makes Mario feel violent in opposition.

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That is what it means. It's probably a little bit of both, so you're not reliant on pure physics to move around (which would be a nightmare). You can see the little robot walking weirdly on stuff, and moving weirdly when grabbing, climbing, etc.

 

Like I imagine physics-wise, it's the usual capsule-character type of movement, or maybe a little more fidelity than that, but graphics-wise, it uses techniques to make it so the feet are always flat on the ground and such.

 

(I realize on re-reading that I didn't directly answer your question but I probably answered enough? Maybe? I hope?)

 

Yeah, it answers it enough. My original comment was half question and half "that's a really weird thing to tout on your Steam video" comment.

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It's cool for people like me! 

 

i.e. programmer nerds........

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I think they're primarily marketing this to hardcore indie types, as to be honest I'm not entirely sure very many would be eager about this sight unseen(even though they should!). They know what it is and that the idea of controlling a robot with it probably implies a very different game from what they're used to.

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If you get moving fast enough from, say, the momentum gained from a steep slope, your feet can't keep up with your body and you start tumbling and rolling forward. It's great.

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I just started playing it and yeah, the procedural(?) animation gives the robit just as much if not more character than if they would have like a bunch of cut-scenes of it fumbling around.

 

The game has a bit of an expressive quality to it when you start to learn to use climbing, jumping, sky-diving, flower-gliding, all in conjunction and it's pretty damn satisfying.

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The game has a bit of an expressive quality to it when you start to learn to use climbing, jumping, sky-diving, flower-gliding, all in conjunction and it's pretty damn satisfying.

 

Definitely -- the controls felt kind of clumsy at first, but once you get the hang of things it's really fun to pull off tricky jumps. Kind of gave me a Just Cause 2 vibe with how natural it feels to do gravity-defying stunts and land safely.

 

I do wish the game was a bit longer... it's nice that it doesn't wear out its welcome, but I would have liked to see one or two more large landmasses. I felt like the exploration peaked about halfway through, and the last section was a bit of a grind with not a lot to do or see.

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This was one of my favorite games last year.  And now you can get it in the latest Humble Bundle for whatever price you want.

Grow Home makes climbing, jumping, beanstalk-riding, leaf-bouncing, gliding, catapulting, and jetpacking all feel dynamic and exciting and it does a great job of making you feel like you’re doing it all very, very, way-too-far-up high in the sky. It's the best feeling of don't-look-down-vertigo since Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

 

The game is utterly charming, with a bunch of silly animals to laugh at, nifty nooks and crannies to explore, and kindly condescending comments from your robot MOM trying to encourage you.

 

And it's short!  Give it a try.  You might love it.

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While I thought the game looked adorable and was pretty interesting, the controls and plant-growing gameplay really didn't click with me, so I dropped it after about an hour.

I'd definitely recommend checking it out though.

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I just dropped $8 on the humble bundle (a bit more than average), getting Grow Home, Call of Juarez, Rayman Origins (these three are available for $1), plus Assasin's Creed Chronicles China (and Far Cry 3 which I have, and Splinter Cell Blacklist, which I might have played on XB360).

 

I liked the look of it, so am looking forward to digging in!

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