Wanting to produce more meaningful content, the Grounded development team at Obsidian Entertainment plans on releasing larger, less frequent updates. A Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-inspired survival title, Grounded is a cooperative adventure that tasks players with surviving in their backyard after being shrunk to insect-size. Of course, insects themselves, many of whom appear gargantuan in size, make the surviving aspect all the more challenging.
Obsidian and Xbox Game Studios rolled out Grounded's Early Access phase on PC and Xbox platforms in July 2020. While a full release should launch sometime this year, details on this front presently remain under lock and key. Updates big and small have proven instrumental in keeping players active throughout the Early Access period. The Koi Pond update in November added underwater exploration, for example. A late January 2021 patch unleashed bees, fireflies, and mosquitoes into the world of Grounded. According to Obsidian, the frequency of these types of changes will soon lessen.
Grounded's small production crew at Obsidian (via GameSpot) wrote a letter to players in late May, highlighting what's expected of the game in the near future. The note explained that large monthly updates are difficult to manage given the team's size and various tasks associated with such a project. Thus, "we will be looking at doing larger and slightly less frequent updates moving forward, which will allow us to make our updates more meaningful with more and better content." The focus now centers on balancing the need to keep Grounded fresh, while ensuring developers have time to fully implement new features.
This shift will first appear with the 0.10.0 patch, which Obsidian says will serve as one of the largest updates yet. Scheduled to launch at the end of June, 0.10.0 aims to introduced flipped buildings, extra building pieces, changes to giant food items, additional photo mode features, and an "enhanced defense variant" known as the ARC.R.
Grounded's 0.10.0 patch will mark the first major update since Obsidian deployed 0.9.0 patch back in April. Notably, the issued changes included bug fixes, curved building pieces, ladders, fresh combat music, and a creative game mode. The June content sounds as though it will similarly grant players access to game-altering experiences.
Obsidian's inventive survival title is slowly approaching its one-year Early Access anniversary. As of writing, the team has yet to announced when exactly a fully release may go live. Still, the preview period has worked wonders, thus far.
Grounded is available to play on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S platforms.