GrabRewardsville Guide: Plant seeds, grow trees, earn GrabRewards points

Grab has partnered with Sqkii (the company behind those #HuntTheMouse games) to launch GrabRewardsville, a virtual tree planting game that lets you win GrabRewards points. 

Play GrabRewardsville

While I normally don’t dabble in such shenanigans, I’m never one to turn down free points. I sat through the tutorial but was still hopelessly confused afterwards, so I’ve decided to pen a guide of my own explaining just how GrabRewardsville works. 

Step 1: Get Seeds

To grow a tree, you’ll need a seed. You’ll be given three seeds upon starting the game, and can earn additional seeds as follows:

Missions are specific tasks that you can complete once for bonus seeds. For example, planting a seed in infertile soil gives you a reward of one bonus seed; as does planting two seeds in fertile soil.

Missions need not be completed in the order they’re listed; for example, you could do 1–>4–>7–>2. Remember to tap the green “Redeem” button to claim your bonus seeds; they are not credited automatically. 

Likewise, seeds for Grab rides are not credited automatically; you’ll need to find them in the My Rewards section, copy the reward code and paste it into the game. 

Step 2: Plant Seeds

Once you’ve got a seed, you need to plant it in soil. The type of soil depends on your location, and there are four types in total (just like the parable!):

You can only plant seeds in your physical location, so you’ll need to get out and about (beware location spoofers, Sqkii has been known to crack down). Do note that you cannot plant more than one seed in a given location, and some locations may already be full- there’s no way of knowing until you’re physically there. 

Obviously the Deluxe soil has the best chances of high-yielding plants, so everyone will be hunting for that. Here’s some data points, as reported in the GrabRewards group:

• Fertile: Changi Jewel, Lawn @ Marina Bay
• Rich: ION Orchard, Raffles Place, Fullerton, Marina Bay Shoppes, USS
• Deluxe: Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve

Keep in mind the locations above are not static; they are subject to change depending on supply and demand. If too many people start planting in a given Rich location, for example, that soil may later be downgraded to Fertile or Infertile. 

Step 3: Evolve or Harvest seeds

Once seeds are planted, you wait. Sprouts will grow into Seedlings, Seedlings grow into Saplings, Saplings grow into Trees. Each stage will be one of four types:

• Frail
• Healthy
• Excellent
• Diamond

Stages take two hours to complete, and at each stage after the Sprout, plants can either be evolved or harvested. While you need to be physically in a given location to plant a seed, you can evolve or harvest it from anywhere.

Evolving takes you to the next level; harvesting cashes you out and ends the cycle. You have 12 hours to evolve or harvest a plant at each stage. Wait too long, and it will wither and become useless. 

Here’s the payoff for harvesting at each stage:

The actual number of points for a Tree is determined by a random number generator, with the possible ranges shown above. 

The type at an earlier stage does not necessarily determine the type at a later stage; for example, a Frail Sprout may become a Diamond Seedling (highly unlikely, though). In the same way, a Diamond Sapling may become a Frail Tree.

Is it worth your time?

GrabRewardsville is a fun little game, but is it worth heading all over Singapore hunting down Deluxe soil and accumulating seeds? Well, 1 GrabRewards point is worth roughly 0.2 cents, so your payoff is as follows:

Only you can decide whether that’s worth the time and expense, but quite frankly, I personally wouldn’t bother travelling around just looking for Rich or Deluxe soil. Based on the data points I’m seeing, there’s a fair bit of randomness built into the system. People are harvesting Excellent Trees from Infertile Soil; people are getting Frail Trees from Rich Soil. 

Even if you got a confirmed tip on where the Deluxe soil is, you won’t actually know if the plot is full until you’re physically there. There’s nothing worse than making a special trip down only to find that you can’t plant anything!

So my general advice would be:

• Only harvest at the Tree stage; there’s almost no point cashing out at the Seedling or Sapling stages
• Don’t hoard your seeds for Rich and Deluxe soil; keep one seed planted at your home soil at all times, even if it’s Infertile. You might get lucky.
• Deluxe soil plots have limited capacity; by all means visit if it’s near your house, but think carefully about going out of your way (especially since Deluxe soil is no guarantee of a Diamond plant)

The T&C for this game can be found here. 

Conclusion

GrabRewardsville is a cute little game and a nice distraction, though you’ll want to carefully consider if it’s worth going out of your way to find good soil. Good soil can yield bad trees; bad soil can yield good trees. There’s no guarantee; it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

I’m personally just going to be sowing my seeds (fnar) wherever I happen to be. Even a modest haul of GrabRewards points is still better than nothing, and who knows, I may be more fertile than I thought.