The Survival Game Grounded plays with your innermost instincts and has created a setting that looks exciting for every player at first glance – you are super tiny with your friends in the garden.
What kind of game is this? The new survival title Grounded is currently in “Early Access” and made a big hit on Steam in early August.
The formula behind the game from developer studio Obsidian Entertainment is quite simple but genius: Your character is tiny, and you can mix up your garden in co-op mode with up to 3 friends. Grounded runs on PC, Xbox One, and is also set to launch for Xbox Series X.
You stumble as a tiny person through a fairly well-kept garden open world and experience what life looks like under the grass. Grounded does not hold back with your diminished characters and offers a true survival experience.
Grounded received its first major update a few days ago (on August 26th), and MeinMMO takes a look at what makes this little survival hit from Microsoft and what players say about the bustling adventure. You can find more exciting survival titles that are brand new this year here.
Fighting for survival as a tiny creature awakens ancient instincts
What is there to see? Almost everything you find in a typical garden, only bigger! 4 teenagers find themselves in a cave and quickly realize that they are missing a good deal of height. The 4 friends are only slightly taller than a pinhead. Even a small ladybug looks like a spacious family coach on a hunt for aphids.
As a player, you take control of one of the growing dwarfs from either a first or third-person perspective and must defend against dangers lurking everywhere in the garden. Kleptomaniac ants, aggressive venomous spiders, and a frighteningly large bird play a role here.
But before dealing with the dangers, you first have to take in the perspective. Grass blades are towering high, lost toys block the way on a large scale, and above it all looms the giant oak – a mountain of leaves and wood. When you first climb up a bit higher and look over the “grass forest,” the view is truly enjoyable and offers an exciting perspective – familiar yet somehow not.
Grounded also offers nice graphics. The characters and insects come in comic graphics, yet the garden appears surprisingly realistic in many places, further enhancing the overwhelming feeling of being “small.” Among the grasses, you feel almost like in a jungle, and the various biomes add a bit of variety.
Add to this the pressing survival setting. Hunger, thirst, and death are especially your constant companions at the start. Not to mention the ever-present danger of other garden inhabitants. The shrinking machine caused you to suddenly find yourself at the other end of the food chain, and you must gradually fight your way back to the status of predator with equipment and skill.
Cute game is a tough survival experience
How does the game progress? As is typical for many survival titles, you start with a completely empty inventory. Grounded offers a story that ultimately “unsticks” you, and through exploration of the area during the tutorial, some quests also start. However, the main story is currently not yet finished.
It quickly becomes clear that food and water are scarce. Especially when you are out and about in co-op mode, you will constantly struggle with hunger at the beginning. To ensure a reliable supply of food and water, you need a fortified shelter. While you can place everything important outdoors, the greedy ant neighbors even bold enough to steal your stuff from your boxes if you don’t protect it enough.
At the beginning, however, you do not have the necessary knowledge to craft an improvised water-catching device from spider webs. To educate yourself in “garden knowledge,” there are analysis labs scattered throughout the garden, and you can examine many of the lootable items in the game here. This gives you new construction plans and helps develop your base. There are also building plans for better tools, weapons, and armor.
For all the new items, you use the available resources of an average garden: grass blades as wooden planks, acorn tops for chests and armor, or spider webs for water collection.
Once your base is set up and you’ve completed a few quests, the first major expedition awaits – the main quest sends you on an exploration tour towards the oak tree. You don’t have to follow the main story at first, but here you can acquire better building plans. Currently, the story is relatively short anyway – if you want to jump in, you should finish it quickly to get to the better items.
You advance outside the story by exploring and finding new items. With every beetle leg or larva juice you drag into the analysis lab, your knowledge improves, and you learn more and more about useful survival aids in the garden.
You get better weapons & tools, build a dedicated shelter, and for the first time, experience how your entire construction progress is wiped out by the visit of a gigantic, terrifying spider. Because even in the garden, only the strongest survive – and the spider will soon learn that too.
If you want to see and know more about Grounded, check out the GameStar video. Our colleagues introduce the game a bit and spoke with the developers during gamescom:
Players love the idea and graphics, but Xbox service and Early Access annoy some
Grounded launched in Early Access on Steam on July 28, 2020, and became a small surprise hit. The appealing setting rewarded interested players with good sales figures.
On Steam, the game debuted at number 1 on the sales charts from July 27 to August 2 (as reported by the colleagues at GameStar), and even now (August 29), the numbers speak a clear language – 86% of more than 7,500 ratings are positive.
Players on Steam particularly praise the refreshing setting and good graphics. The user “Captain Hook” writes on Steam even says, “Grounded is the best Early Access game I’ve ever gotten my hands on.” He especially praises the gameplay that offers a lot for an early access title and the loving design and animation of the environment.
But there are also some negative voices that, for example, struggle with crashes and bugs. Especially the short story, which can currently be completed in less than an hour, bothers some buyers. Many negative reviews state that the game is not worth 30 euros in its current state. Even the enthusiastic reviewer “Captain Hook” says that the price is steep.
Add to this the requirement for the Xbox Live service in co-op mode. Even if you buy the game on Steam, you need another Xbox Live account to start playing together.
These three points – short story, high price, and Xbox Live requirement – currently represent the biggest problems for players. However, the negative voices are significantly in the minority, and for many, the great atmosphere, good gameplay, and extensive crafting options make up for it.
Should I check out Grounded? If you are a survival fan – absolutely. The game already offers many crafting and exploration opportunities besides the story. If you enjoy exploring an exciting open world and building an exaggerated base at the same time, Grounded already has a lot to offer in Early Access.
However, the point at which you have exhausted the possibilities does not take long to arrive. If the early access model is not for you, then keep your hands off the title but keep an eye on it. Grounded is set to celebrate its full release in 2021 and will provide regular updates until then. On an English Grounded website, you can find features that the developers still want to integrate into the game. Optimal for a look: The survival game is part of the “Xbox Game Pass“.
All in all, a really interesting title whose perspective appears coherent at first glance but does not rest on its attractive setting, instead also shows what is possible in a garden when it comes to crafting. Upon release, there is a good chance that Grounded will land on our list of the 23 best survival games on PS4, Xbox, and PC.
