Not Your Grandfather's Farming Sim! Grow: Song of the Evertree Review

    Grow: Song of the Evertree is a delightful, nature-based game of exploration and conservationism. As Prideful Sloth's sophomore game, it takes a lot of mechanics and visuals from their first game, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles, while twisting them into something new. Grow worlds, build towns, and solve puzzles while bringing harmony back to the land of Alaria. Strap in – there's a LOT to this game, so this review is going to get lengthy. This isn't your grandfather's farming sim!

    The story of Grow: Song of the Evertree is a simple one: people lived in harmony with the land until they didn't, and then the Withering grew from their disrespect and took over, causing almost everyone – save yourself – to flee out into the universe. But you felt a duty to save Alaria, so you stayed and studied alchemy in the hopes that one day, you could restore the land to harmony. And that's what you do-- use alchemy to create new worlds on the Evertree to help it flourish, while also using those resources to clear the Withering from Alaria and bring people back. While doing this, you are also searching for fragments of the Song – the life force that holds it all together but was broken by the greed of humanity. It's a story of environmentalism, and Prideful Sloth echoed this by planting a tree for every copy added to a Steam wishlist leading up to the game's release, which I loved! Game studios take note: more of this, please!

    Creating your character at the start of the game is fairly basic, with a few choices of hair color and style, body type, and other simple features. It does feature a non-binary option for gender, and all hair and clothing options can be worn regardless of gender. However, the real character customization happens as you play and obtain clothes, accessories, and hair options through shops and rewards. Those who played Yonder or watched my review for that game will find this familiar-- it's a mechanic that works very well in both games. Additionally, in Grow, you can give any of these to townies, customizing their looks, and everything remains gender neutral in regards to them too. In fact, you may even get a situation where a female character requests a traditionally masculine thing like a beard-- and they look fabulous!

    Along your journey, you have some help. Coppertop and Book are your alchemy mentors-- literally a talking cauldron and book who raised and trained you since you were young. They help you through the tutorial of the game but also remain a constant as you progress. Eventually, their helpful hints give way to charming banter once you know what you're doing, but they remain essential in other ways. You use Coppertop to alchemize ingredients and create world seeds, and Book keeps track of your goals and achievements.

    Kazumi is a beautiful, mysterious creature who flies you up to the Evertree every day to tend your worlds, and they can also be called upon for fast travel throughout the overworld of Alaria. You can befriend them through daily interactions of caring for them, which unlocks additional poses for photos with them, and progresses their own little storyline. I won't spoil the surprise, but it's really cute and worth doing!

    The last of your helpers are the Everkin, fun little creatures who live in their own little world of Where-ever, accessed through a portal near your house. At the beginning of the game, they teach you how to use your tools, including how to catch fish and bugs. Once that tutorial is completed, you're free to explore Where-ever-- and I do encourage exploring it, there are many chests and secrets to find!-- and you can return here whenever to trade for rare essences, town decorations, and more. Everkin also visit Alaria, where they are happy to help build structures in town and clear rubble blocking paths. Additionally, you're asked to find Everkids while you explore Alaria and your worlds on the Evertree, and these playful Everkin can then be stationed at a completed world or nature reserve to gather resources for you. The Everkin are so helpful because they share your goal-- they want harmony to be restored, and the fragments of the Song to be found and put back together.

    While you have help, and everyone wants the world to be restored, the game remains a no pressure, go at your own pace story. You can cheese getting unlocks to find all the song fragments and finish the story quickly, or you can take your time, ignoring the story completely for days on end to tend to your towns and worlds. It's up to you-- although I will say, taking time to develop each town makes the story's end more satisfying, and both world tending and town building can continue indefinitely once the story is complete.

 

WORLD SEEDS

    Much of the gameplay – most of my 150 hours, personally – is spent creating and tending to worlds on the Evertree. These little pocket worlds are procedurally generated based on the essences you choose to create the world seed, and have six basic biomes: desert, frozen, fungi, gross, nature, and princess. Depending on the essences used, you can mix and match biomes to create some really unique combinations. Once I was done with the story, I kept creating worlds to see what spawned. If there's an addictive part to this game, this is it for me!

     Oh, and did I mention that there's no stamina or tools breaking? I love it! Tools breaking is a mechanic that should've been left behind years ago in most sim games, so I'm glad that Prideful Sloth didn't embrace it here. You don't even need to refill your watering can! The only thing you have to worry about, in regards to tending your worlds, is getting everything done before the sun sets – but don't worry if you don't finish! Plants won't wither and die if you don't get to them – you just pick up where you left off the next time you visit the world. In fact, you can go days without tending your worlds, and the only consequences are halted progress and not gathering those resources. I love the stress-free farming that this game provides!

    Tending worlds is time consuming, so you can probably only manage up to 3 blooming worlds at a time, and it's mundane and repetitive-- but mundane and repetitive in the best way. I recently joked that Grow is more of an “adult” game than the likes of Call of Duty, and I stand by that. For a lot of adults, especially those of us with ADHD whose brains almost never quiet, these “mundane”, repetitive tasks are exactly what our brains crave. It's so relaxing to fly up to a world to plant, water, and weed to my heart's content. It takes 9 in-game days for a world to fully bloom, and then you can release it to make room for another world, or keep it to continue harvesting and collecting. And, oh, the collecting! This game is a collector's dream-- or nightmare, considering it's endless.

    Each world has a list of unique things to collect-- fish, bugs, flowers, and more that are only available on that specific world. Some are common and you'll collect lots without trying, while others are rare to the point of questioning your determination to complete the collection. I've spent days clear-cutting worlds trying to get a rare fruit to spawn, and good luck finding that last insect on a fully bloomed world. (Here's a hint: try to catch them all while you're developing the world and it's still fairly empty!) But, it's so nice seeing all the items checked off on the progress list! Also, many of these resources can be converted into different essences, so it's important, especially early on, to hunt down everything for a chance at the rarer essences.

     Additionally, every world spawns a number of critters that you can befriend and adopt. These come in two types: small, dog-like creatures and large, bovine-ish animals. Their specific appearances are, like the other flora and fauna, procedurally generated based on the biome, and you'd be hard pressed to get the same exact animal on two worlds. However, I do wish there were more critter types. They're cute, and I've definitely come across plenty that made me squee with delight, but after seeing all the unique creatures in Yonder, this is a bit of a letdown. I want a cute unicorn deer type to populate my princess worlds, is that too much to ask for?

    But, the animals here are cute, and I do enjoy them, don't get me wrong. And once you've befriended them, you can “adopt” them and place them in houses, ranches, and nature preserves in Alaria. So if you've got a particular favorite, you can keep them and visit them whenever, even if you decide to release their world to make room for new ones.

    And there are so many more reasons to keep creating worlds to see what you get! In addition to the randomized fauna and flora, each world has a chance to spawn special features such as puzzles, caves, and even gnome huts. Additionally, every biome has unique “Points of Interest” that have a rarer chance of spawning – mushroom people in fungi worlds are a delight to talk to, and I was far too amused about smashing pustules on a recent Gross World. Plus, aliens and UFOs on desert worlds? Sign me up! There are so many different things that can spawn, and I haven't even seen them all yet. It's why I've made about 30 nature themed worlds hoping for the rare Alice in Wonderland motif. Like I said, it's addicting!

     In addition, there are Perfect Worlds and Strange Worlds. In your exploration, you'll come across alchemy recipes that, when followed, create Perfect World seeds. These worlds are special in name only, as they have the same chances of spawning unique Points of Interest as others, but there is a pretty great reward for growing a perfect world of every biome. Plus, if you're looking for a particular characteristic for a critter or plant, creating perfect worlds narrows the chances compared to having a mixed biome world.

 

    Strange Worlds are very unique worlds that aren't able to grow to full size, but may provide rich resources not easily obtainable otherwise. Run a balloon obstacle course for a chest at the end, or mine to your heart's content with a cave world. It's always a surprise when you plant the seed and see what you get. According to the wiki, there's no way to guarantee a strange seed, just that they have a 10% chance to be created instead of a regular world seed. However, it's RNG based so it could take more than that, your mileage may vary. Once you have plenty of extra essences, I highly recommend messing around to see what you get!

ALARIA

    Alaria, the overworld, has been overtaken by the Withering, and it is through your journey that you clear out the Withering and unlock more of the map. This is done by a few components: unlocking an area, paying Everkin myora to clear out piles of debris and Withering, finding Song Fragments, and raising the area's happiness to 100%. Once you've done these, the Withering is pushed back more, unlocking the next area and its surrounding land. There are 7 towns and areas in all, each with their own objectives, environments, and secrets.

    Each region's town can be uniquely customized, and this is another part of the game that you can easily sink dozens upon dozens of hours into. When you first start, you're very limited by buildings available, not to mention the cost of myora to place buildings and decorations. But this quickly becomes less of an issue, especially if you're regularly tending to your Evertree worlds and building with variety. Caring for your worlds generates both myora and essences that certain buildings will require, and sometimes placing a certain number of a specific building will unlock a different blueprint. Additionally, while you need myora to build, happy towns generate quite a bit of myora daily. I rarely have to worry about running out of myora after the third district unless I undertake a huge redecorating project in a single day. I think this aspect is balanced nicely between the limited resources of the start of the game versus when you've put time and care into re-harmonizing the world.

    It is worth noting, however, that you can only customize the exterior of the towns. Decorating or changing the inside of buildings, including your own house, isn't a mechanic in this game. The interiors are cute, and at least you can go inside them and they're functional spaces, which is a step up from Yonder, but I can only imagine how many more hours I'd put into this game if there was interior customization! From the perspective of being a town and world management game, not including this aspect makes sense but from the perspective of being able to customize everything else, even the townies, the lack of this is noticeable. If Prideful Sloth ever revisits Alaria for a sequel, or even a big update, this is what I'd like to see besides some bugs and performance issues being addressed – but we'll get to those.

    As another note, there's a day and night cycle, and you are forced to go to bed at midnight. It's annoying to someone like me who doesn't love that mechanic – I praised Yonder for not forcing me to sleep at night – but honestly, it works well in this game for the most part. The nightly reset gives the game a chance to tally up myora that was generated, spawn new visitors for your towns, and progress your blooming worlds to the next stage. I just wish we had more time at night, or, at the very least Book's warning about going to bed came with a little more time to finish up what we're doing before we pass out. But overall, for the type of game that Grow is, having a day/night cycle makes sense, and they incorporate it well here.

CHARACTERS

    The main story is essentially a solo journey, although you do have the guidance of Book and Coppertop. However, there are many more NPCs that you can meet and interact with, from regular townspeople to the mysterious Everkin. While a few of these NPCs get individual stories, none are fully fleshed out, and the townies that populate the district are very one dimensional. Each person has their own dream job, skill level, and preferences, but are otherwise interchangeable from one NPC to another, including repeating dialogue. This is fine, as Grow is a world management sim rather than a life sim, but it's worth noting in case someone expected actual friendships or personality.

    There are a few exceptions – there are 5 characters that get their own miniature stories as you progress through your own story. They do still remain fairly basic-- I'd say maybe they're more 2 dimensional than 1-- but it's nice to flesh out the other people and their involvement in the world a bit. However, these characters are romanceable – as I discovered when I accidentally ended up with Oleander just from being nice to him. I tried to stop it at the very last interaction, once I realized what was happening, but I guess I was in too deep at that point! I do wish this wasn't in the game, as it happened so early that it locked me out of parts of other NPCs' stories, and I wasn't even interested in the first place. Furthermore, once you have the last cutscene for your “romance” storyline, that's... it. They give you a token of some sort, and you go on your merry way. Technically you're dating, I guess, because it prevents you from pursuing the other candidates, but in reality, they just become another regular townie after that. In fact, I pretty much stopped talking to my “beloved” after this, because I was so annoyed with how it went, but when I did talk to him, he had the same repeating dialogue as anyone else. So, I think romance was something that easily could've been left out, and is awkwardly included at best. (Hey, that line also sums up my love life!)

EXPLORATION

    As you explore Alaria, you'll quickly see that there's a lot to discover. Journals, caves, secret Polka societies... the land of Alaria is big, and taking time to look around is well rewarded. You'll often stumble upon quick puzzles, and the temples that hold the Song Fragments also hold bigger, more intricate puzzles. All of the puzzles in Grow are on the easier side of things, but that's okay with me. I don't need everything to be a challenge like the shrines in Breath of the Wild – I'm bad at a lot of those puzzles, okay? These are much more my pace and satisfying, not frustrating, to solve. Of course, if you do like more difficult puzzles to solve, you may be let down by these, but I feel the easy level of difficulty matches the game's overall relaxed vibe. And some may still stump you for a bit, as they did me, because pieces are well hidden or certain platforms are tricky to navigate. Additionally, the worlds you grow also have a chance to spawn caves and puzzles, but they're often a much more simplified version of them.

    Since the land of Alaria is so big, you'll probably be happy to know that fast travel exists. In fact, there are three different forms of fast travel, and you can use two of them right away! Your mount, Kazumi, is the one you'll probably use the most, especially considering they're the only way to get up to your worlds on the Evertree. But Kazumi can also bring you around the overland – calling them will bring up a map and from there, you can select any town or nature preserve that you've unlocked, as well as the Alchemist Grotto and festival plaza if it's an event day. Additionally, this is the only way to view a map in the game – as Alaria is so expansive, I find myself calling Kazumi often to see where I am and where I'm going. Okay, if we're going back to my earlier point about wanting a late-game update, adding a map or minimap would definitely be on the list! It's way too easy to get lost in such a big world, and even calling Kazumi doesn't give you a great look of the map. Still, it's better than nothing, and Kazumi will get you to any town you need to go to.

 

    The second fast travel option is the Everkin door. This magical door is tied to the outskirts of each town and your house. This option is great for quickly getting to your towns in the morning to do some building and moving in visitors, or getting home at night before Book chastises you for being out too late. If you're near one door and going to another, this is a quick, convenient way to get there but if you're far from one, you might as well call Kazumi.

    The third fast travel option is a Leap Gate, small doors scattered throughout the landscape. These aren't tied to the towns but rather the spaces between towns, so they're useful for getting to other areas for exploration. However, the doors have nothing to identify where they let out, so you either have to trial and error picking a door, or be really good at remembering the order of the doors. Ultimately, the Leap Gate falls under “cute idea, but rarely used” for me.

PERFORMANCE

    Phew, that's a lot of gameplay to talk about! Now, let's talk about the technical side of things, because there are a few points I want to bring up. First, for transparency, I played this on Switch, PC, and Steam Deck, so I have no experience with how it runs on XBOX and Playstation 4 or 5, and can't speak to those. If you're concerned about performance on those consoles, I would urge seeking out that specific information in other reviews, or joining either the Prideful Sloth or Grow discords and asking the community there (I'll put links down below). Watching this video and happen to have played Grow on one of those consoles? I'd love some feedback on that if you want to leave a comment!

    Grow does suffer from some performance issues, noticeably (very noticeably) on the Switch. Part of this is because of how the game is designed – when you're on Alaria, the entire world is loaded, and you can theoretically see from one end to the other if you can find a spot high enough to look over everything. While this is great because it means no loading screens as you go from district to district, it also means a lot is loaded at all times. If you've done a lot of building and customizing in your towns, you may notice longer load times and dropped frames occasionally, especially as you near the end of the story with all areas unlocked. I noticed this mostly on my Switch save, with load times every in-game morning taking a couple minutes, and Kazumi taking longer and longer to pick me up when I called them.

     The Switch version also struggles in one major way: the game has an autosave feature that triggers about every 3 to 5 minutes, and it absolutely chokes the game on the Switch. (Once again, this gets worse the more you play and unlock.) Even while tending your individual worlds, which means the overland of Alaria isn't loaded as far as I know, the autosave completely freezes the game while it runs. It's a huge hindrance and why, if you can play this game on PC instead, I'd recommend skipping the Switch version. To be clear though, I put 100 hours into my Switch save before getting it on Steam, so it is playable, especially if you're a stubborn Capricorn sun, Taurus moon like me... but it's not recommended if you have another way to play it. But if it's your only way to play it, I still recommend it! Just be aware of this.

    Oh, and I've played on both the original Switch model, the “newer” base Switch model, and a brand new OLED Switch. I've played both docked and undocked, and the game saved to both internal memory and SD card. Not a single factor has changed its performance. Blame autosave. That fantasy update I keep mentioning? Include an option to turn off autosave and we'd be golden here – or at least silver. I can take that.

    On the other hand, I've had nearly flawless performance on my Steam copy, both on my computer and steam deck. Honestly, it runs so well on Steam Deck that going back to my Switch save for this review was even more of a letdown. I love playing it on my deck; the controls, resolution, and performance are all wonderful, and it's the perfect cozy game for my high pain days when I can't sit at my computer.

    There's one additional reason to get this game on PC if you can. Due to performance on consoles, the decoration limit in each town is set at 20 – but on PC, that's increased to 40, and there's a mod that can increase that even further! If you're really into decorating, the 20 item limit just doesn't cut it, and it was much more satisfying to work on my towns on my Steam save for this reason. So, again, that's my recommended platform for this game if it's an option!

    But I did say it performs nearly flawlessly on PC. Unfortunately, there are still a few persistent bugs that you may encounter. Some are minor and have an easy workaround, such as claiming the reward for adopting your first critter. However, one is a big reward for growing a perfect world of every biome type, and there's no known workaround for it. This one really bums me out, as I've gotten the bug on both my saves, and it's a pretty great reward that you can't obtain any other way. Plus, you usually don't get this achievement until well into your playthrough, so it's super disappointing to put all this work in, get attached to your world, and then discover that this major reward is bugged and inaccessible. I finally got the reward on my third save -- did I mention that I'm stubborn -- but I did a speedrun of making perfect worlds to make sure I could get it before investing more time into the save. But now I've got it finally! (Because it's a big reward, I don't want to spoil what it is, but I wish you best of luck with getting it!)

    Still, although this particular bug is disappointing, there are only a few bugs that persist, and even this one doesn't ruin my overall enjoyment of the game. So please don't let this last note deter you from picking it up!

    Overall, Grow: Song of the Evertree is a nice, relaxing mix of farming and town management sims, with a lot of depth to every main aspect of the game. Although it's got a few performance issues and bugs, the good far outshines the bad in this game. The simplified puzzles and repetitiveness may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those who like the sound of that, you'll love Grow. I highly recommend picking it up – on PC if you're able – if you like calm, cozy management sims, stress-free exploration, and customizing and decorating your world. And keep an eye out for more games from Prideful Sloth – their next game, Go-Go Town, has a demo dropping soon that I can't wait to explore with you!