The Climb: Ubi Announce Grow Home

Ubisoft have announced Grow Home, a climbing game about nurturing plants and producing seeds.

The idea is that you're playing a robot called BUD who wants to oxygenate his home world and thus you must persuade a beanstalk from another planet to produce seeds. I will tell you more about the game but I also have questions.

ONE: As a robot, why is he bothered about the level of oxygen on his home planet? He is a robot. He presumably is not indulging in respiration so there must be something else afoot.

TWO: Also, as a robot some parts of him could be made from iron. Iron combines with water and oxygen to make rust, no? Is this beanstalk thing a cry for help?

THREE: Is this a Gone Home sequel? A SEEDquel perhaps? You get to the top of this weird beanstalk on another planet and the robot finds his parents' house and has to find out why his brother has disappeared by decoding binary files scattered around their mansion.

I suppose we can find out the answers to those when they game launches on 4 Feb. In the meantime Ubisoft explained some different things on their blog. One of which is the game's origins – apparently the whole thing started life as an experiment for exploring procedural animation (hence the climbing around an irregular 3Dworld).

Ubi go on to say:

"Taking control of BUD, you'll help the plant grow as you climb your way to the top. Along the way you’ll find yourself traveling through a series of floating islands and crafting your own playground in the sky. As you ride branching vines through the air, you’ll be shaping your own unique world, exploring new locations, and encountering strange plants and animals."

The climbing part is the more interesting bit to me because they've mapped the left and right hand controls to the left and right triggers of a game controller. I feel like that could make the experience of clambering about more enjoyable, although there's also a chance I'm just saying that because I tried playing Assassin's Creed Unity last night and I still hate how climbing works in that Ubisoft franchise.