Grow: Song of the Evertree Review

Developed by Prideful Sloth and Published by 505 Games, Grow: Song of the Evertree is a relaxing adventure game. With some wonderful colourful lush areas filled with wonder and cutely designed characters and animals, this game gives off a real positive feeling. There is also a wonderful orchestral backing track which I feel has some oriental tones but it fits the rhythm of the game nicely. Have you ever wanted to save your world and restore its natural beauty as well as design your world how you see fit? Well, look no further; this game offers you a chance to play the hero and recreate the world to your design without any stress from conflict.

You play the role of the last Everheart Alchemist in a place called Alaria where all the worlds are dying. A once harmonious world that was in sync with the Evertree, someone broke the balance and the people got too greedy and selfish which caused the withering to take place which cause the Evertree to slowly fade and the once lush worlds became dark barren lands. But you find the formula for the perfect seed to spring the Evertree back into life. As you clear up the withering and restore nature by regrowing the plants and trees you start to see the lush worlds come back to life. As you start to heal the Evertree it starts to resonate with you and with the help of its song you can start to return the beauty to the world. As you do, people start to come back to your worlds, and you have to keep them all happy by building houses and other buildings for them to live and contribute to the world and restore harmony.

The game plays like an organised Animal Crossing which is the best way to describe it. It’s a 3D sandbox game with very few platforming elements to it. The look and feel of the game are like a combination of the modern 3D Mario games and Animal Crossing.  Where in Animal Crossing you have complete free will and you have certain things you can do if you want to, Grow: Song of the Evertree has all the same components of cutting down and planting trees, watering them, breaking rocks, catching bugs and fishing amongst other things. The difference is the game has many different mini objectives for you to aim for but it also has a sort of main quest objective for you to do as well. Every day you need to tend to your tree world where you need to drive back the withering. This is completed by cutting back dead grass, pulling out dark plants, cleaning up affected animals, breaking ill-placed rocks and planting new trees. You don’t fight anything here as nothing can hurt you, so you are freed from that worry and so you can just whittle away your time in a cathartic manner cleaning up the world.

The controls are fairly simple and fluid and should be easy for most to pick up and play. Each day in the game you have a set of things you ought to do and some things you can choose to do. Every day in the game you usually have to tend to the tree world which involved cleaning animals, pulling out withering plants, breaking rocks, planting trees and then watering them. You can ask for a helpful guide to point you to what needs doing and you get told when it’s all done. This work is needed to restore the Evertree to its former glory. Also in doing so you earn the currency Myora. This currency is what you will need to rebuild your town. As more people come back to your worlds you need to build houses and places for them to enjoy and work at. Every building costs Myora to build as well as some essence. Essence can be gained by extracting the essence of objects you collect. As you tend to the world and complete objectives you find or are rewarded different objects in form of materials, clothing, accessories, decorations or house decorations. Whatever you don’t need you can recycle into essences which there are many. But although you need essences for some buildings sometimes you will need the items for certain people in your town.

 There isn’t much else to say about this game, it’s to be played casually and it’s not something you can really fail at so it can be taken at a slower pace as you want. I do have some concerns about it though. Some fetch quests you get from your townspeople ask for things you have no idea how to find them. One asked for a Chillax Pome and for the life of me I am not sure what it is or how to find one. They could have given a bit more hints or where to find some of these things. Other than that it is something you can whittle your time away without any stress.

Conclusion

Grow: Song of the Evertree feels like a mobile phone time-killing game that has been plucked out spruced up with some gorgeous graphics, added some great orchestral background music, pumped the game full of things to do and gives you free license with how you want to play create your worlds. As with these types of games, some things can get quite repetitive but if you want a stress free pretty looking game then you could easily lose some hours with this game.

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This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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Good
  • Bright, lush and colourful graphics
  • Charming character designs
  • Plenty to do and lots to create
Bad
  • Can be repetitive
  • Some guidance for how to find certain things is needed
7.3
Good
Gameplay - 7
Graphics - 8
Audio - 7
Longevity - 7
Written by
Gaming, or, games in general, are in my blood. Just shy of an addiction but still an obsession. From opening my mind on the Commodore 64 I have kept up with the generations of gaming, currently residing on the Xbox One. Gamertag: Grahamreaper

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