Take a small plot of land and create a stunning pocket of nature in Grow Wild, a wholesome nature game about habitats and ecosystems.
It’s been a while since I’ve played a game about managing a small plot of land that quite conveys the interplay between creatures and their environment that Grow Wild manages, in fact, I know exactly what game that was, it was Viva Pinata for the Xbox 360 — and while it was fun, for all it’s puns and colours, Grow Wild has a humble sincerity. It captures the magic of rewilding, of meadow flowers and of the wonders of reclaimed biodiversity.
Now, the one thing about dealing with nature in relation to games is how dang slow it is. Video games will often break things like world growth down through turns or chapters. That’s not the case here, instead Grow Wild runs off a real-time clock, and it does so at 100x speed. A calendar year passes in less than four days — enough time to dip back in and reconstruct an area through the four seasons, but also just fast enough that you can slow down and take in the weeds, flowers and insects living a full life within a calendar day. That, if you ask me, is pretty impressive.
Mechanically, it’s combination driven. Once you’ve got X of Y in place, Z will appear, you’ve got a checklist to work through and, well, that’s it. You’ll explore around your plot of land, zooming in with your magnifying glass to identify bugs, birds and minibeasts, adding them to your nature book, while also gathering and distributing wildlife. You’ll want to gather seeds, build log piles and carefully place plants to maximise pollen, gemination and the like — or maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll just want a little spot filled with flowers, bees and little else.
I’ve now seen Grow Wild at three different events, the first time as little more than a concept, the second as a lonely wireframe and now, most recently, while at Develop: Brighton as a much more fully-formed and polished title. I’m really excited to have it idling away on my desktop, as almost a screensaver, as with recent idle games like Rusty’s Retirement and Idle Waters — I’m hoping there’s a borderless windowed mode when it releases.
Grow Wild is currently still in development, when it releases it will do so for PC, via Steam.
