The new game, still in early access, from the developer that brought gems like The Outer Worlds and Fallout: New Vegas to gamers has received a new update. Obsidian's Grounded drew in many interested gamers for its novel premise when it was first released, reaching 1 million players in just two days. Since then, updates have added lots of new content and improvements for fans to scramble through, and yesterday's update introduced mosquitoes and everyone's favorite little monsters; bees.
Grounded is a unique spin on the survival game genre in that it shrinks the player down to the size of an ant so that the smallest of creatures are suddenly large and lethal. The battleground is a backyard where spiders are the most dangerous enemies, and players must find food and water to keep themselves alive as they discover why they have been turned so tiny. The game can be played alone, or with up to 4 players in a co-operative mode where players traverse a landscape filled with towering stalks of grass and toys scattered around the environment. Set in the 1990s, this is seriously reminiscent of the 1989 film Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, and when asked, Obsidian confirmed that it drew inspiration from this landmark movie.
The newest features and improvements for the game are detailed on Obsidian Entertainment's website. Update 0.6.0 introduces 3 new creatures for players to interact with; mosquitoes, bees and fireflies. This naturally leads to more crafting content if players manage to harvest the supplies from their new enemies, like a bee armor set, firefly headlamp, stinger spear, mosquito needle, and more including two new stuffed friends – a bee and a firefly. There is also a new perk, and many areas have been improved upon, like the backpack. Now, equipped items don't take up space, and the player will get to keep equipped items after death, although with a small amount of durability damage. There are more gameplay improvements too.
Grounded is one of the first games released by Obsidian since it was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. Although the early access version has been released on PC, it was also released on Xbox One and remains one of the only, more recent, survival games exclusive to Xbox. Under Xbox Game Studios, Grounded was also released on Xbox Series X/S in November of last year, and the full game is set to come out sometime in 2021, with no talk of it being released on other platforms.
Grounded looks like a little game with a lot to explore. The addition of mosquitoes, bees and fireflies only adds to the already large pool of items and animals the player might come across, including some koi in an actual pool. With many more improvements and bug fixes to get these bugs working just right, players who enjoy survival games should definitely give this one a try, as it's like a breath of fresh air in the genre.
Grounded is available on PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Obsidian Entertainment