Ubisoft’s climbing robot game still justifies its one-button control scheme

Ubisoft Reflections built Grow Home as an internal project, and the way it escaped the studio is part of the story. It reached Microsoft Windows on February 4, 2015, and PlayStation 4 on September 1, 2015. Ubisoft confirmed the public release in a blog post on January 22, 2015, after the game caught on among co-workers.

Grow Home is a third-person adventure platformer. You play B.U.D., the Botanical Utility Droid, and your task is to oxygenate a home planet by growing and climbing a Star Plant — a giant beanstalk — and harvesting its seeds. The world is open, made of floating islands, and full of strange plants and animals.

The score is 7.8 out of 10.

Trailer, via IGDBcom.

Two Hands on the Star Plant

The control scheme is the whole game. Players move B.U.D. and grab with each hand separately, one button per hand. That lets B.U.D. reach a short distance and latch onto any part of the environment, pushing and climbing whatever it touches. Movement is physics-based and the animation is procedural, so B.U.D.’s body adapts to the terrain instead of running a fixed set of canned moves.

That choice separates Grow Home from the platformers it sits beside. Most games in the genre ask you to trust a jump arc. This one asks you to trust a grip.

The Star Plant is the spine of the map. Players grow Star Shoots from it, and those shoots act as platforms. They only grow for a limited time, and the player directs where they go. Get it right and a shoot carries you to one of the floating islands. Get it wrong and you are climbing back up.

Energy Rocks and the Long Way Down

Some islands, called Energy Rocks, can be connected to Star Shoots to make the Star Plant grow along a set path. As Grow Home progresses, those Energy Rocks sit farther and farther from the Star Plant, so routes get longer and the margin for a mistake gets thinner. Certain heights push the Star Plant through larger floating islands. Those bigger islands, plus the smaller ones around the plant, hold power-up crystals that give B.U.D. extra abilities.

The environment does more than decorate. Caves and water currents sit in the world, and leaves growing off the Star Plant and the Star Shoots let the player jump higher than normal. B.U.D.’s ship computer, M.O.M., talks to the player and states the current objective.

The fall is the cost of all of it. One wrong move and it is a long way down, and the game makes sure you feel the distance.

A Small Team, a Big Plant

The origin story matters here. Grow Home started as an internal project at Ubisoft Reflections, built in the Unity engine, and it spread among the staff before anyone planned a commercial release. That is how the game got greenlit, per Ubisoft’s January 22, 2015 blog post.

That origin explains the shape of the thing. Grow Home is short, and it does not pad. It has a single-player mode, a third-person camera, and a science fiction setting, and it spends its budget on one idea rather than a dozen. The open world is not vast. It is vertical.

Reviews at launch were favorable. The open world and the visuals drew praise. The length drew criticism. Both reactions are fair, and they are two sides of the same decision.

What the Climb Actually Costs

Here is where Grow Home lands, and where it does not.

The grabbing is the best thing in the game. Splitting left and right hands into separate buttons sounds like a gimmick until you are hanging off a shoot with one arm and reaching for an Energy Rock with the other. It turns traversal into a series of small decisions instead of a held direction. The procedural animation sells it, because B.U.D. never looks like it is running a script. It looks like it is holding on.

The Star Shoots are the second-best idea. A platform that grows on a timer and follows a path you choose is a clean way to make an open world feel authored without making it linear. You are not finding the route. You are growing it, and it can expire while you are standing on it.

The short length is not a flaw in the design. It is the design. Grow Home knows it has one mechanic worth teaching, and it teaches it, tests it, and stops. The complaint that it ends too soon is really a complaint that it does not repeat itself, and repetition is the failure mode this game avoids.

What holds it back is the back half. As the Energy Rocks drift farther from the Star Plant, the routes stretch and the game leans harder on the same climb with more distance. The power-up crystals and the extra abilities they grant are a thin reward for the detour. The floating islands are pretty and the creatures are strange, but they are scenery more than they are systems.

A Sequel, and a Change of Hands

Ubisoft released a sequel, Grow Up, on August 16, 2016. In 2025, Atari acquired the Grow Home intellectual property from Ubisoft.

That is worth noting for what it says about the game’s standing. A project that began as an internal experiment at Ubisoft Reflections, confirmed for release in a blog post on January 22, 2015, and shipped on Microsoft Windows that February and PlayStation 4 that September, ended up valuable enough to change owners a decade later. Grow Home did not become a franchise by scale. It became one by being specific.

Where the Beanstalk Ends

Grow Home earns its 7.8 out of 10 on the strength of one mechanic and the discipline to build around it. The two-hand climbing is not a novelty. It is the reason to play, and the Star Shoots give it a structure that holds up on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Linux.

The game is short, and the closing stretch trades invention for distance. Neither sinks it. Grow Home is a small, strange, well-made thing that understands exactly how long it should last, and that is rarer than any beanstalk.

Atari · B.U.D. · Grow Home · platformer review · Star Plant · Ubisoft Reflections