Growing Up

I always go back to this store page to see if there any other games like this. It's just the best for my silly sim-loving brain. The gameplay is so deliciously mindless but relaxing. The art is fantastic. I just want more incredibly basic 'princess builder' style games like this. Raise from birth and put x points into y to create z outcome.

Growing Up is a stat-raising life sim where you raise a child from birth to age 18 by having them learn skills, organize their schedule, fulfill parental expectations, and manage their mental health. Along the way, you'll have the opportunity to make friends with other characters, and ultimately unlock an ending based on your skills and stats at graduation. The gameplay loop is pretty simple. Each turn, you select which attributes to level up in a minigame called the brain map. Then, you're able to unlock different subjects using general knowledge points and your accumulated skill in each subject's related attribute. You also have action points, which let you perform different actions around town, and schedule slots, which let you study different subjects or take actions you've unlocked. Every action allows you to improve attributes, parental satisfaction, mental health, and/or earn money. The game proceeds through four different life stages which get gradually more complex, with more activities available and more things to manage. Between the other activities you do, you get requests from your parents and periodically have conversations with side characters that progress their stories. At the end of each life stage, you have an exam minigame. Doing well on the exam gives you a bonus at the start of the next life stage, and your score on the SAT at the end of high school plays a part in determining your final ending, along with your relative attribute levels, and possibly what bonus skills you unlock. You aren't able to make any choices about your final career. Once you get the hang of the mechanics, it isn't too hard to keep your character happy enough to unlock enough skills to finish side stories and do well on exams, although trying to keep mental health and parental satisfaction high at the same time can be challenging at different points. There were also a couple of points where the parental expectations you get don't make sense or are impossible to fulfill (perform outside non-entertainment activities when you haven't unlocked any, for example). For each of the stages at school, you meet a new friend. There are 12 friends you can meet, four for each life stage, and other than each having a specific life stage when they'll meet you, which friend you get each game is random. The conversations you have with them will determine whether or not you stay friends, whether you have a relationship in high school, and what your friend's epilogue ending is. Making choices to stay friends is usually pretty common sense, but some of the romance options are less intuitive to unlock. A couple of them also felt like they required you to make a romantic choice at an inappropriate moment and would not give you the opportunity to try for romance again at a less serious moment later on. I liked all of the friends that I met, and I appreciated that even the ones you only meet in high school have deep stories. There are also a number of mentors that you can meet that are associated with optional skill trees you can unlock around town. These characters were all fine, although their dialogue choices don't change the progression of their stories at all. What I didn't like about these characters is that your interactions with them don't affect the rest of the story in any way. Aside from occasionally unlocking specific locations, your choices with each character don't affect your relationships with other characters or your parents. I had a couple of times where my character got in big trouble with a friend, but they still had really high parental approval. The game gets super repetitive after a couple of playthroughs. Other than the friend relationships, the gameplay is basically the same every life. Playing a second generation of the same family has no affect on the game other than skipping the tutorial and ruling out the previous generation's friends as your second character's friends. The personality of your parent (or parents if your first character got married to a friend) has no affect on the expectations or conversations they have with their child. Overall, I enjoyed Growing Up. I liked the main gameplay loop and trying to unlock different endings, although it's too repetitive to want to do more than a couple of playthroughs in a short period of time. I liked the side characters in general, although there were a number of places where I wished the game had a bit more depth. 7/10

好玩，音乐真的很好听。一周目过后有些重复， 朋友们都很萌，npc随便抓一个人生都波澜起伏曲折离奇相比之下主角过得太幸福了

It was fun at the start but gets extremely repetitive, especially the puzzles. I wish there was more content with the player character's family aside from them giving you endless sidequests that also get repetitive. I would have rated this game positively if it wasn't for the disappointing ending. [spoiler]You just finish another puzzle for the SATs and then they tell you what happened to your character with a rushed time skip. If you also didn't feel like romancing any of your friends, the game just asks you which gender you want your future wife/husband to be, and then they give you a random spouse out of nowhere[/spoiler] If you just want to kill a couple hours, I guess you can pick up this game, but if you want something more than a visual novel with incredibly repetitive puzzle segments, I'd choose another game.

The game isnt as fun as its colorful visuals might suggest. In fact, its very, very repetitive. The player simply has to find the perfect balance between happiness and relationship with characters parents, and stick to that strategy. There are other, more effective ways to improve characther grades and boost mood. Its a shame that once u ve exceeded a certain score on the final exam, u dont earn any more points. Finding the balance isnt that hard — u just have to constantly calculate and estimate in ur head. But that makes the game feel like such a grind. I played through it with three characters and quit. I wasnt interested in unlocking achievements or reading the dialogues. The game lacks a challenge, and personally, Id like to see one. Theres also no variety in the dialogues with parents, and their silly tasks start to get on nerves. I wouldnt recommend playing this game in 2026. There are too many other, better products on the gaming market right now.

I've done 3 or 4 playthroughs now and I gotta say I love this game. It's fun, its relaxing, the character stories are actually good enough I couldn't predict the endings of most of them, and as an avid reader that was a pleasant surprise! I love the puzzles and the way the brain system works. If you ever make another game like this I'd be happy to play it!

Such a cute life sim. At 26hrs in, I've played the game a few times over looking for different outcomes. Its been great! Highly recommend if you like games such as Volcano Princess, Chinese Parents, Magical Princess etc

This is like a more polished Chinese Parents but set in the U.S. in the 90's. Very similar mechanics and does get grindy, but the friends and love interests actually have interesting and coherent storylines. Their arcs deal with real issues, like substance abuse and body image, and your choices truly do have an impact on how their story plays out. I appreciate that it's open to queer relationships and I was satisfied with Alicia's ending. Honestly, in terms of what could be improved, the relationship with the parents could have more depth and I wish there was more clarity as to how the career ending is decided. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed my first playthrough and recommend this to fans of stat-raising games and coming-of-age stories.

I am so surprised by the overwhelming positive reviews. I love life management sim. I love managing my characters stats and relationships to see how it's going to affect his life. I put over 100h in Exocolonist exactly because of that. But here I got bored almost instantly. I didn't even got to meet any character because of uninterested I was in the gameplay Had it been a game on phone, I would've say "Cool game to kilm some time", but to play on computer/steam deck, the brain map/schedule system really feels lacking. And then you get to the exam and it's this sort of.... bejewel mini-game, and the game lost me.