MY ONE-OFF EXPERIENCE WITH ‘GROW HOME’.
Sometimes in life you can have an experience that will never be repeated again. I believe that I had an experience such as that when I played Ubisoft’s videogame ‘Grow Home’.
What helped make playing this game a not-to-be-repeated experience was that I knew almost nothing about the game prior to playing it. It was free to subscribers to PlayStationPlus so I figured it was worth downloading and giving it a go.
Thus, when the game started, a process of discovery began. First thing I learned was that, in this game, I was cast in the role of a little red robot called B.U.D, an acronym of Biological Utility Droid. What was BUD capable of, and why was he stood at the edge of a cartoony shore, gazing at an outcrop of rock a few paces ahead?
The developer of games such as The Sims and Spore, Will Wright, once commented:
“Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn’t a random process: It’s the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As players refine this model, they begin to master the game world”.
And that is what I did upon my first play of Grow Home: Mash buttons to see how B.U.D responded. Now, as with any scientific method hypotheses that hold true in a wide range of situations are llikely to hold true in a new one, and so I was able to rely on my previous knowledge of game mechanics and be confident that the left analogue stick would cause B.U.D to walk. The environment, with its rock face right in front of me, had the impression of being a 3D platformer, like Super Marios 64. So probably one of the circle, triangle, square, X buttons would cause B.U.D to jump. Ah! There we are, he has a little jetpack.
When I moved B.U.D, I found that his animations were procedurally generated. In other words, instead of having teams of artists prepare animations for various situations like walking and climbing, in Grow Home B.U.D’s animation is calculated on-the-fly by algorithms, depending on the terrain he is interacting with. This method of procedural animation gave B.U.D an endearingly infantile appearance, as he seemed somehow not quite in control of his sometimes wayward arms and legs. In fact, he seemed like a baby robot (an impression amplified by his vocalisations, which were R2D2-like babbles and coos somewhat like an infant).
So, I had succeeded in getting B.U.D to walk up to the outcrop of rock. Clearly B.U.D had to climb it somehow. Now, normally, when a game presents you with a cliff face you can only climb certain sections of it, and those sections will be highlighted by having a different appearance to the rest of the cliff. But I discovered that in Grow Home B.U.D could climb any surface. The question was, how? More fiddling about with button combinations determined that the L2 and R2 triggers gave me control of his arms, and by moving the analogue sticks I could position them to make him grab hold, haul himself up the cliff-face, grab another hand-hold and so on.
At the top of that little outcrop of rock, the camera panned up to provide B.U.D and me with a panoramic view of the gameworld. Far above us, almost lost in the blue haze of distance, there appeared to be floating islands in the sky. And ahead of us, across a cartoony beach upon which wandered a couple of cartoony sheep, there was what looked like a giant plant.
At this point, the meaning of the game’s title and B.U.D’s purpose became a little clearer: B.U.D’s home was up there in the sky somewhere, and I had to use that plant to reach B.U.D’s home. The plant could be made to grow, somehow, and in so doing enable us to reach those islands in the sky and, eventually, allow B.U.D to ‘grow home’.
At the base of the plant, B.U.D and I looked up and saw a shoot with a bright red tip. If ever there was an obvious marker, this was it. B.U.D and I attempted to ascend up the plant’s main stem and along that branch, dangling over the beach below us as we made our way to that red tip at the end. Now, let’s press buttons and see…
Ah! That button causes the stem to grow, and I can encourage the direction in which it grows. Oh, that big glowing rock ahead seems an obvious target.
As the branch made contact with the glowing rock, the plant grew a little larger, a little taller, and sprouted more branches. Now, B.U.D’s goal was a lot clearer. With my help, he had to climb up the plant, work his way to the end of the branches, and grow them so that he could reach the floating islands, and, eventually, his home up, up, up in the sky.
When I began the game I knew very little about what B.U.D could do. In both his mannerisms and my inexpert guidance he was like an infant who could barely control his limbs and for whom just climbing up a small outcrop of rock was something of an achievement. But the more I played the game, the more control I gained over B.U.D’s abilities and the more confident we became in exploring the floating islands and in scrambling up the plant and its many branches that twisted and turned and reached for the sky.
Many times, I messed up and caused B.U.D to fall to the ground below and smash to pieces. But that wasn’t so bad because B.U.D would just reassemble, shake his head and carry on. Often, we would receive encouraging messages from M.O.M, who presumably lived in the red spaceship that I could just about make out way, way above us.
In time B.U.D became a real daredevil, taking great risks as he held on with one hand, dangling over a massive drop, or launched himself into the air using a leaf like a hang glider, before letting go and skydiving toward a distant branch or floating island, landing with pinpoint accuracy.
So why was this a never-to-be-repeated experience? Because, whenever I replay Grow Home, B.U.D just isn’t the baby robot who has to learn through trial and error what he must do and how he can do it. He isn’t a baby robot because I have already mastered his ability to run, climb, soar, and have already learned what various items will do to aid little B.U.D in his quest to grow the star plant and reach his red spaceship at the top of the map.
And you know what? It feels kind of sad, knowing that magic experience I had, that journey of discovery in which B.U.D went from being an infantile robot who could barely control his limbs to being a master of his environment who could risk breathtaking climbs and leaps confident in his abilities, can never be repeated.