I’ve always been a pretty staunch naysayer of the survival sim genre but Grounded might have won me over. Taking the concept of “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and turning that into a game, Obsidian dropped a demo for what’s probably one of their most interesting games ever made. You’re a kid, you’ve been shrunk to about the size of an ant, and you’ve got to figure out a way to get back to your regular size without being eaten along the way.
Grounded
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Platform: PC & Xbox One
The thirty-minute demo plops you in the middle of an open garden where you’re free to pretty much poke your head into every nook and cranny you can get into. There’s a brief introductory mission you can do that introduces you to a bit of the game’s mechanics, but you kind of have to figure out the rest yourself.
Exploring the garden, while tending to feel a bit “samey” overtime as it’s all just the same looking vegetation, does have its moments of awe as you look up and see giant juice boxes dripping droplets you can slurp up. The bug life itself is decently varied from what I saw as mites chewed on powerlines, massive ladybugs strode past me, and spiders whose cave I accidentally walked into struck genuine fear into me as they pounced.
Being a survival sim, you can expect the usual from the genre where you need to first craft an axe so you can begin chopping things down to build stronger tools to chop bigger things down. This loop is where the genre usually loses me, but I honestly didn’t mind it as much here. Part of it is most definitely the aesthetic and hunting for an ant head for my samurai themed ant armor is way more interesting than making like, a trucker hat. The other plus is that I never felt like I had to work hard to find the materials I needed. I needed to craft a torch to go into a cave for a mission and had none of the required materials; two minutes later I had all of it and more.
I’m definitely interested to see more of what the game has to offer, mainly in regards to side-content as while exploring the backyard was interesting, it did feel a bit aimless. Although to be fair this is just a demo, and of an early access game at that so only time will tell.
