Grow: Song of The Evertree from Prideful Sloth and 505 Games is a charming game in which you can grow your own world to bring the titular tree back to life. Check our Grow: Song of The Evertree review!

 

Grow: Song of The Evertree from Prideful Sloth and 505 Games is a charming game in which you can grow your own world to bring the titular tree back to life. Prideful Sloth previously gave us the relaxing, colorful, charming Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles on PlayStation 4 – and later on Nintendo Switch. It had some The Legend of Zelda vibes, which is never a bad thing. And now, with Grow: Song of The Evertree, the team went back to the drawing board… and then figured they could refine the overall experience from Yonder, expand on things, and dive into a world-crafting sandbox with some adventure and life management sim elements sprinkled on top.

For Grow: Song of The Evertree, you’ll be taking on a journey to revive the fading Evertree. Many worlds used to reside on its countless branches, but the Evertree is no more. It’s only a small sapling, with its former splendor now gone. You’ll work at your own pace as you try to find a way to use your special power to make the Evertree sing. As the last of the Everheart Alchemists, it’s your job to grow and protect the Evertree before it’s too late! The Whitering has taken hold, and it’s up to you to fix things and remove The Whitering so that life can shine.

 

Before you get started with your adventure, you can customize your character. You can select your character’s name, genre, body shape, and skin tone. You can select its eye color if it will sport a pair of glasses, or perhaps it will have a mole, or some freckles… or a lot! After that, all that will be left is selecting your character’s hairstyle, as well as its hair color, from the 16 different color options. And, who knows, you might want to add a mustache, a beard, or a goatee to spice things up.

Since this is a third-person adventure, you’ll move your character with the left analog stick as you swing around the camera with the right one. You can interact with objects and characters with the A button. You’ll have to make good use of your alchemist tools by pressing the Y button. To switch between tools, you can use the L and R buttons. If you press and hold down either button, you can open the tool wheel so that you can quickly select the right tool for whatever job needs to be taken care of.

 

You can press the ZL button to find which spots need your attention so that you can destroy any rubble that gets in your way, pluck weeds by constantly pressing the A button, planting seeds and watering them so that you can then sing to them with the ZR button to help them grow. Press the – button, and you’ll get access to your inventory, where you can review key items, reorder your tools, check any consumables in your stock, as well as check how many of each type of essence you’ve managed to collect so far. Essences are very important since they’ll be used for crafting the objects you’ll need to improve the lives of those around you.

You can craft World Seeds with the power of alchemy so that you can generate new worlds with unique characteristics. After that, you’ll have to rejuvenate them and see how everything grows back to life as new elements emerge. Will you work in a desert world? Is it going to be a world frozen in time? Alchemy is not an exact science, so even if you think you know what a World Seed will have waiting for you, there’s still a chance that you’ll end up pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

 

The flora and the fauna will be part of what you need to care for in each world you explore, but so will be the different characters you’ll meet. Interact with them and learn more about their stories, and perhaps see if you can help them if needed. Find them a nice play to stay, help them get that job they’ve always wanted, or maybe, just maybe, you’ll have to find the right item for them to find joy. The more characters you meet and help, the bigger the community will get. Catch some insects, use your fishing pole to, well, fish, and make everything grow and grow!

Any objectives and quests you have to complete will be added to Book, which you can check by pressing right on the D-Pad. Book will make a note of any new goal that pops up, and once you complete them, it will give you a badge for your efforts, as well as some rewards. To give you an idea of what goals you will need to complete, there will be one for sleeping for ten nights, growing 40 trees, caring for 200 plants while they grow, harvesting 25 items, clearing a mining point, or making your World Seed grow one level.

Grow: Song of The Evertree has a slow start, but if you give it a chance and allow it to get all of the tutorials out of the way, and you’ll find a world full of wonder, secrets, goals to complete, and people to help, all in a game that you can play at your own pace. It’s not going to be a game for everyone, but if it clicks with you, you’ll find yourself inside of a very addictive gameplay loop. Sure, there’s some slowdown in the Nintendo Switch version of the game – especially when playing in Portable or Tabletop Mode – but it’s nothing that kept me from enjoying this colorful experience. Grow: Song of The Evertree is out on Nintendo Switch with a $24.99 price.

Disclaimer
This Grow: Song of The Evertree review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by 505 Games.