Remarkably, Grow: Song of the Evertree isn’t the first game to put the traps of city-building games into RPG-tinged adventures – we can cite Dark Cloud and ActRaiser as predecessors. But Grow does it with remarkable style and charm, and the early buzz suggests that this is an indie game worth checking out.

Grow gives you the humble task of creating entire worlds, using alchemy to plant new locations thanks to World Seeds. These seeds grow in various types of environments – deserts, arctic kingdoms, etc. – and then you build villages and help citizens find happiness there. In between, you dive into caves and ruins, solving puzzles in more traditional exploration segments, but without a fight.

Early critical reviews have been quite positive (81 on OpenCritic), and Steam players have been equally kind, as the game has a “very positive” rating on Valve’s platform. Developer Prideful Sloth previously released Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles in 2017, an equally cold take on open-ended adventure games.

Check out the trailer below.

For more traditional city building games, you can follow this link.

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