Grounded

Grounded is a creative and atmospheric first-person adventure game where you explore a suburban backyard as a tiny teenager. After being shrunk down to the size of an ant, you must navigate this beautiful yet hostile environment, fighting for your survival against all sorts of danger. Playable as either a single-player or multiplayer cooperative adventure, this unique survival game offers a quirky perspective with lots of intense moments. By day, you'll traverse the familiar yet massive yard foraging for supplies. When night falls, the creepy crawlers will reclaim the land, forcing you to prepare for a fight. With its unique setting and tough gameplay, Grounded presents an epic quest with miniature proportions.

Main Game Features

• First-person crafting, survival, and exploration
• Solo and multiplayer options
• Five unique difficulty settings

Story

Similar to the narrative structure found in other survival games like Valheim and Subnautica, Grounded starts with the player thrust into its setting, slowly revealing its secrets as they explore. At the beginning of the game you wake up in a dirty tunnel, and after breaching the surface, realize you are now less than an inch tall.

During your initial scan of the area, you discover a mysterious field outpost, equipped with tiny scientific research tools. Further on, a high-tech laser device lies dormant, awaiting your activation. With each step of the narrative, you'll uncover a clue about where you are and who's responsible for your microscopic size. The story is interesting enough to keep you progressing through the yard, but don't expect any major twists and turns. While Grounded has an engaging gameplay loop, the narrative is somewhat par for the course.

Gameplay

Grounded is similar in style to other first-person survival games, with an emphasis on crafting and exploration. There are three main difficulty options, including a casual experience, the standard setting, or an increased challenge. On the standard difficulty, you must manage your health, stamina, thirst, and hunger, or perish in the punishing terrain. Left out in the elements, you must scavenge resources like pebbles, vines, and bug parts to stay alive. There's an expansive crafting system that allows you to build a large inventory of useful items, helping you stay alive for longer. You can build structures like walls, doors, and workbenches, which provide shelter from the elements and access to weapons and armor. As you craft simple tools like hammers, axes, and spears, you'll be able to harvest better materials, fortifying your existing arsenal and expanding your base.

In addition to crafting supplies and surviving the outdoors, you'll spend most of your time pursuing the main story quest or fighting against various insects that occupy the backyard. Quests are designed to encourage exploration rather than give an exact location, allowing for some unexpected moments of anxiety and bewilderment. Given your vulnerable size, any insect predator in the yard can quickly kill you, so it's best to prepare for combat before it happens. Killing smaller enemies like ants and beetles is simple enough, but fending off giant spiders is no joke! When you eventually die, you'll respawn at your most recent spawn point, but must retrieve your dropped inventory or lose out on the precious gear.

Conclusion

If you enjoy challenging survival games with fun and inventive maps to explore, then Grounded should be plenty enjoyable. The crafting and base building can be a bit overwhelming at times, but the gameplay loop of gathering supplies and improving gear is tons of fun. On standard difficulty, the game can be a bit tough as a solo experience, so be sure to bring friends for this exciting trip through nature.

Pros:

• Good accessibility options
• Unique world and atmosphere
• Fun with friends

Cons:

• Story is underwhelming
• Building can be frustrating
• Enemies overwhelm you quickly