Obsidian's newest game, Grounded, is currently in Xbox Game Preview, and the team has recently shared a roadmap of the new environments, enemies, and more that players can expect before the experience hits version 1.0. A survival game that's best described as the gaming successor to the old Honey I Shrunk The Kids play place at Disney World, Obsidian released the game about a month ago. Playable in either first or third person, players shrink down to the size of ants and try to survive in the yard while gathering resources and fending off newly potent threats. Per its inspiration, the game takes place during the 1990s and plays off of the troupes normally associated with films where a group of kids band together to solve a mystery.
The version currently available on Xbox One and PC via direct purchase or Game Pass is about 20% complete when it comes to the campaign. Players can take on the world solo, although the campaign is mainly designed for cooperative play with up to four players a-la games like Sea of Thieves. Base-building plays a huge part in the game as of now, as does keeping hunger and thirst meters satisfied via pickups players find across the backyard environment.
In a new "feature board" posted to the official Grounded website, the developers of Obsidian have mapped out their future planned updates for the experience. The roadmap includes the recent August update, which added character perks, birds, and better inventory management. The next block if for features that are "approximately a few months off." Players can look forward to several quality-of-life features like password-protected games, friend invites, and an expanded inventory thanks to separating equipped items from the backpack. The game will also get official translations to French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
As far as gameplay-focused updates, the next few months will let players build ziplines in their existing colonies and spread the playable space to a koi pond and the hedge environment. The pond will also come with water-themed equipment as well as a hostile mosquito that will certainly be terrifying to behold. In the even more far-off updates, other planned hostile creatures include fireflies and roly-polies, as well as additional ant hills and an encounter with the Ant Queen. Those who enjoy the avian features of the current update will be pleased to hear that there will also be improvements to the bird visitors as well as additional interactions with them.
Grounded has been another smash hit for Xbox Game Studios and Xbox Game Pass, which is great to hear considering that the project was in development even before Microsoft acquired Obsidian. It would be entirely understandable if Microsoft wanted to cut the project loose and focus the team on one big premiere later on down the line. That may have happened in the past, but the Game Pass strategy has afforded Microsoft and its developers more free reign to explore smaller titles that could blossom into the next big them. In an industry just as often dominated by games like Fall Guys as games like Call of Duty, you never know where the next blockbuster title may come from.
Grounded is available now on Xbox One and PC.
Source: Obsidian