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Growing Up on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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This is the story of your life. Experience the entire journey from toddler to adulthood. Go to schools, learn new things, meet new friends, and have wild adventures! Every choice you make will influence your future career, and decide who your romantic partner will be. Who will you become?
Growing Up is a life sim, story rich and choices matter game
developed by Vile Monarch
and published by Vile Monarch and Spiral Up Games.
Released on October 13th 2021 is available on Windows and MacOS
in 9 languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Russian, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal and Portuguese - Brazil.
It has received 3,279 reviews of which 2,879 were positive and 400 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.5 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 14.79€ on Steam, but you can find it for 7.89€ on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified Growing Up into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Growing Up through various videos and screenshots.
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 10
- Processor: 1.2 GHz Intel or equivilent AMD family
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 10 compatible GPU
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 2 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: macOS Sierra 10.12+
- Processor: 64 bit
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 6000
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Steam Price & Best Deals
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
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
It is at times tedious I will admit that. But I love this game.. It's just chill. Every now and then I will play this game for a while daily, then not touch it for a while.. But will always get back to it pretty much. I really wish there'd come more to it tho, but sadly I don't think it'll happen. But I'd love for it to get a DLC with new stuff, new characters... Or maybe a 2nd game with new people. The achievements are decent enough to do, although some of them was a bit... harder to get.
Solidly fun. I won't pretend its perfect, as those looking for flaws will find them, but I've been having a lot of fun with this. The biggest issue that I've had is how it ends with graduating high school, and while I know why that is, it still leaves me wanting more. Which, if a game leaves you feeling like its biggest flaw is that you want more of it? It's why I'd definitely recommend it for anyone who's into life sims or other "playing with dolls" type games! (Tho, maaaybe wait for it to go on sale unless you're a dedicated life-simmer).
Grow up in the United States during peak 1990s. Information • 12 romanceable characters? (There a guides that claim they know each characters’ romantic preferences, but I keep finding conflicting info, and experiencing different stuff in playthroughs. I honestly have no idea what the characters’ official preferences are supposed to be. This is why, for game mechanic simplicity, everyone should be bisexual.) • 52 career endings. • Typical gender binary assigning at birth. No option for child to realize differently later. Praises • Gameplay is very addicting. Played for 12 hours first session. • The art for the character portraits and backgrounds are very nice. I really like how detailed everything is. So American 1990s! • You can change your character’s clothes at age 5, then both hair and clothes once they reach middle school. • Some of the romance scenes are actually written well. Cute and/or thrilling teenage love. My favorites were Nathan, Kato, and surprisingly, Alicia. • A lot of the lesson animations are amusing and over-the-top. • Racial diversity is decent. • Thicc character rep. • Disabled character (with prosthetic arm) rep. Complaints • The devs want credit for being LGBTQ inclusive but without actually being that inclusive. Alex should totally be a trans man. I thought that’s where the story was going, but nope. She looks the part at the end of her story and has a triggered reaction to the given name “Alexandra” but is still called “she/her” at the end of the story. Richard seems like a sex-repulsed asexual, but that’s never actually confirmed. I don’t want hints, bruh, I want the words spoken. Hints and implications are for cowards. Charles is only confirmed as gay at the epilogue and I had no idea he was supposed to be. There’s no indication of that while playing as a female character. The same goes for Vivica, unless you try to kiss her. Then, omfg, during Flick’s story, there’s so much homoeroticism while playing a female character, but she’s supposed to be hetero and I’m like “wtf is this teasing sh!t?” Don’t be cowards. You’ll just piss off the social minority you’re supposedly trying to represent. • I hate Sam’s route. It seems like there is no way to get through it as a female character without her demeaning herself. No thanks. He’s the only character I enjoy seeing getting a bad ending over and over again. • The English occasionally has British English, which is weird to read when there is an American flag in the background of many scenes. • “Skip” skips choices. Just because I don’t want to re-read dialogue I’ve already read doesn’t mean I don’t want to make good choices to get characters’ good endings still. There is no option in the settings to change this. I know it would’ve been a lot more work, but what would’ve been really cool is if the game had a set amount of generations and with each one there was a different time era, rather than being perpetually stuck in the 1990s. Just a thought I had. Despite my b*tching, I did enjoy the game. Like I said, addictive af. I just wish people wouldn’t be cowards when it comes to queer representation. Stop giving too many f*cks about how bigots might react to the game, when it clearly isn’t for them. Other than that and some other needed improvements, it’s a good game. I recommend it to people who like the genre.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Growing Up is currently priced at 14.79€ on Steam.
No, Growing Up is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 14.79€ on Steam.
Yes, Growing Up received 2,879 positive votes out of a total of 3,279 achieving a rating of 8.45.
😎
Growing Up was developed by Vile Monarch and published by Vile Monarch and Spiral Up Games.
Yes, Growing Up is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Yes, Growing Up is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
No, Growing Up is not playable on Linux.
Growing Up is a single-player game.
No, Growing Up does not currently offer any DLC.
No, Growing Up does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
No, Growing Up does not support Steam Remote Play.
Yes, Growing Up is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Growing Up.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 24 July 2026 04:09 UTC |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 26 July 2026 17:24 UTC |
| Steam price | 28 July 2026 18:25 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 27 July 2026 01:48 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Growing Up, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Growing Up
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Growing Up concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Growing Up compatibility
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Game modes
Features
Online players
35
Developer
Vile Monarch
Publisher
Vile Monarch,
Spiral Up Games
Release
13 Oct 2021
Platforms
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