Over the last couple of years, it feels as if Obsidian Entertainment has been making one of the best survival games in the market with Grounded 2. The sequel to the original Grounded was released last year on July 29, 2025. Since then, we’ve seen a number of updates that have expanded the park and added a lot of content for players to enjoy.
During Summer Game Fest 2026, Obsidian Entertainment made an appearance with a playable build of the Beat the Heat update. As you may have expected, if you’ve seen the trailers, it had me and three other players go toe-to-toe with a horned lizard in an epic fight that mirrored an epic Dungeons and Dragons fight. It’s worth noting that this update has been out since April, but this appointment with Obsidian finally gave me a reason to jump right into and try it out, and I can’t wait to fight the boss again all on my own.
After I was done playing, I sat down with Grounded 2’s game director, Chris Parker, to talk all things related to the game. Throughout our interview, we delved into his favorite tabletop roleplaying games, plans for future updates, how the team keeps the game fresh and fun, and, of course, the latest update, Into the Abyss.
MonsterVine: While playing, I couldn’t help but notice the D&D crossover with the classes. Was this something that the team did intentionally?
Parker: I mean, there’s definitely some intentionality there, I think, with Grounded 2, the IP lens itself to Nostalgia a lot. You know, it’s a 1992 game. I think a lot of gamers like myself are at least a little bit like either RPG or DND nerds, and so we play into those sorts of archetypes or ideals pretty often. Pete plays a version of D&D in the game called Minotaurs and Myrmidons. We have figures for that, we have dice for that. When it came time to put what I should say in Grounded 1. These all existed, right? It’s just a classless system, and you can kind of set up your build however you want, and we didn’t change that with Grounded 2. We just tried to make it a lot easier for people to understand, like.
Hey, if you wanna you wanna be tanky, and if you want to be a fighter, this is good equipment for it. This is our good weapon for it. Put all this stuff together. This is going to be a good fighter, build a good fighter, build a good range, build a good Mage, build a good Rogue, build right, and so on.
Then just lean into those things, so that when, either when people are playing together as a group, they can kind of like, figure out, who’s got what role pretty easily. Or if they’re playing single player, they can think about what their plans are for the day. Then ask, what am I sort of hunting today? And what’s the best build for me to go hunt that way?
MonsterVine: What are tabletop games that you and the team are fans of?
Parker: When you look at the team, I mean, I think, probably collectively, we’ve played every published pen and paper game ever. I will speak for myself, though, and I will say my favorite system still is D&D, I’m all the fence between 3.5 and 5.
Both of them, I love dearly. Before, I did not. Other games that I really, really love right behind that. I have a deep love of Shadow Run. I think it’s a lot of fun to play that system and roll 1 million D6s at the same time. Back in high school, there was a Marvel superheroes game that just used D10s.
I loved that game; they stopped supporting it after a while. But that probably is number three for the one that I’ve played the most. Some other really fun call-outs, though, that are ridiculous.
Another couple of fun call-outs. Champions, Paranoid. It is the stupidest game ever, but it always makes me laugh. Then playing a lot of, uh, a lot of the White Wolf over the years as well with, like, vampire and mage, and stuff like that. Now, I’m just sort of naming all of them. I named my top three off the top.
MonsterVine: In the Beat The Heat boss fight, it’s basically a dragon. What was the thought process behind that?
Parker: It’s interesting, you describe it as a dragon, because that’s 100 correct. That was the vibe that we were going for. So when we were working all the way back on Grounded 1. The idea of doing a lizard in the park was introduced there.
We actually started working on it. The team got it to a certain level of completion, but it never quite felt right. So when we were doing the garden update, that wound up being the Toxic Tangle. A lot of the themes and the Toxic Tangle actually revolve around sort of fairy tales.
Now, we didn’t lean into this too heavily, but it was sort of a theme that we were kind of working on when we were building that. We were like this is the area where it makes sense for the lizard to come back because the community knew about the lizard, too. They’ve been asking for the lizard for a long time.
They were like this is the area where it makes sense. This is the area where it makes sense for us to figure out how to make this lizard. Literally into our fire-breathing dragon, and so you know the team. Obsidian and Eidos would both get on board with this and start figuring it out, you know, and one of the first things we did was kind of like just scaled up the existing lizard as far as possible.
How big can we make this thing before it breaks all the game rules, basically? Then we just worked on it. From there came up with a story of why it breathes fire because it loves eating the spicy candy in the game, which is the spicy or the Hot Chachas.
Yeah, we just ran with it, and so that became King Dozer, which came out and Beat The Heat. Which is the feature update right after the Toxic Tangle.
MonsterVine: In a lot of ways, Grounded 2 already feels like a complete game. I’m curious whether you have had a talk with the team to slap the 1.0 on it yet?
Parker: I’m not gonna give you any dates or anything or any details. Yeah, what, I’ll say, is this. From the original pitches that we discussed and figured out around the park. We knew approximately how large we wanted it to be. We kind of knew the different pieces of the story we wanted to tell, and some of the different sections.
So, we got a very good understanding of a very good road map idea. Of how we wanted all this to work. I don’t think the game can get to 1.0 until we’ve filled all of those goals we created for ourselves. Because a lot of them fit together to actually make the story that we’re trying to tell.
But at the same time, it was really important for us to have all that we came out with in early access. That did almost feel like a complete game, right? We wanted a beginning and a middle and an end. We wanted a big boss fight at the end.
We wanted to feel like when you had finished that boss fight at the end. It felt like you accomplished something, and it was cool. That there was a, you know, good amount of content there foundationally, that would set up the rest of the park for what we were building.
I’m really happy when I see the community saying, like, yeah, we. We feel that we get it. And now, now it’s just a matter of kind of building the rest of the parking. These big chunks, uh, like the upcoming one, Into The Abyss, that we have coming out in the summer.
MonsterVine: In a lot of ways, the Grounded franchise feels like a love letter to the ’80s and ‘ 90s. On top of high fantasy, sci-fi was really booming during that time. Do you have plans to maybe have your own version of this Dune or Star Wars-esque story?
Parker: So, I’m gonna say that we are constantly yoying with how to use particularly nostalgic popular culture media in the game. Even with the trailer that we just released, that’s a love letter to Jurassic Park’s first trailer, right? It’s exactly what it is, I know, a lot of people aren’t gonna get that, but it meant something to us, and it was important to us, and so, whenever we’re putting stuff into the game that’s probably an Ode to something that exists. That said, specifically. I don’t know that we’ve referenced any of those stories you talked about.
I will say, references to Star Wars come up constantly. Like, we’ll be talking about story points or whatever. And I’ll be like, I don’t really understand what you’re saying. Are you saying this is like when, like, Darth Vader to Palpatine?
Is that what we’re, the relationship that we’ve got here, then everybody be? Like, yeah, yeah, that’s it, or no, no, no, you understand, it’s more, you know, it’s more like this. So those kinds of references come up constantly as we’re like, figuring out how we want the story to play out or the relationships between characters.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say that there’s any that we specifically sort of mimicked or glommed onto as part of our structure.
MonsterVine: When doing research on what to add in Grounded 2, how do you wrestle nostalgia versus something that was an actual pivotal moment for the time?
Parker: Yeah, that’s a really good question, so I’m gonna split it down the middle. So, on one hand. We want to be sort of. Realistic-ish within our Grounded IP.
When we’re talking about a new area, we’re talking about the biomes in that area. We’re also talking about what the insects are that we want here, and can we say these make sense, and will they make sense? We may have a really long list of insects that we’re talking about, you know, maybe like 12 or 13 that we’re thinking about doing for a particular area, and then we’re gonna like sort of rationally base it on how well we think gameplay will work, how cool they’ll look in the game.
How horrifying might they be? We’re gonna narrow that list down to the handful that are going to wind up showing up in that area.
It’s about giving a sense of. Of realism to the game, even though you know it’s a little cartoony, and you’re like, kind of sci-fi. Like, you said, cause you’ve been shrunk down, but how do we give it that bit of integrity in terms of what it’s based on?
Then you have this entire other side, which is the sort of goofy Joy of Grounded, which is about. Coming up with lists of things number one, like, what are the wonders or the points of interest that we want to put into the park. What are toys from that era that maybe we want to look at?
And if we really like one of those. How are we going to brand it within the Grounded world? There’s a specific set of companies that make all the stuff that’s in Grounded. So, you know, who would make this particular toy and why, and we get into sometimes, like, very long and very complicated stories about how and why these things exist. So, if you look at? Axel, who was the tarantula spider that showed up in that. Harry and Scary update. This is the first update that we did after the original early access release.
We were like, we can’t have this tarantula in the park, it doesn’t make any sense. But then we’re like, but they sell tarantulas at pet stores, let’s make a terrarium in the park, then break it, leave crumbs for players to learn what the recipe is for that thing in the tarantula wants to eat.
This is ridiculousness, right? But it’s sort of like Grounded ridiculousness, and those are the kinds of things that we like. I don’t want to say, agonize over, but really, like, put a lot of energy and thought into making sure that they make sense within the game world. That applies to all the nostalgic stuff as well.
For example, on a props list that just came up last week. There was a Tamagotchi on there. And, I’m like, man, we all had Tamagotchis. But like, that was, in 1996, man, we can’t put that in the game. It’s just too new. Can we find something else that is appropriately goofy? For this time period, I will go research that and find some other solution that brings that sort of joy, and that interesting nostalgia hit.
MonsterVine: How do you balance the realism and goofiness when you add in new content to Grounded 2?
Parker: We sort of have to get into a room, and we just have to sort of debate it out. I’m going to give you an example. This is a great one, and I doubt that anybody has ever talked about this before. So, in Grounded 2, there are pts’s, which are these pneumatic tubes.
That kind of send you from one area of the park to another, and we’re updating these in 0.5 to make them better so that they’re more like a normal fast travel system, but these were originally pitched as teleporters. We got together, and we’re like. I don’t know why.
But shrinking a teenager to the size of an ant works. Teleportation. No, I mean, it’s a step too far. That is a step too far; that is not. That is not totally a specialty. There’s no other scientist who could have developed it because there’s no reason for it to be here.
Like, we just can’t do it. What can we do instead, you know? I don’t know, man, what can we do? And then, you know, eventually, it’s like, you guys, remember, like the 1980s, where like you could go to the bank, and you put a thing in and air happened, and it sucked it someplace else.
You would have a teller at the window over here. Can you drive up like you’re going to, like it would be the equivalent of going to like Taco Bell. Now you open up this thing. You pull it out. Put all your stuff. Nice little tube and close it. It’ll go. It’s send it off to it and open it up. So we’re like, okay, what about pneumatic tubes? Can we make this work? And we’re like, you know, what?
We can make pneumatic tubes work. Let’s do it. I kid you not, I simplified it so much right now. This was like a month-long debate, like we were talking about this forever. The game designers and world designers needed a teleporter. It’s like, okay. We get it. We agree with you. We need to figure out how it works in the ground and Technology, and so that’s the. That’s the kind of debate that we have.
MonsterVine: The new update you announced is interesting, because this isn’t necessarily a new idea. But the way in which we’ll be going underwater is. How do you make sure you’re not just repeating what you’ve already done?
Parker: So this is like a perfect question, because when we were looking at this area. One of the things we had to ask ourselves, first and foremost, was: Like the Grounded 1 pond experience was fun. It was cool.
Do we need to do that again? Should we do something new? Like, how is this going to make sense? We knew that there were going to be other biomes that were adjacent to the pond. We know we’re going to do this mountain, etc.
We know all three of these are going to play together in this ultimate Quest to basically get to the bottom of the pond. If we were gonna do that, then we had to set some goals for ourselves, and that was basically what we put underneath this umbrella of swimming 2.0. What are all the things that we would want to do if we’re going to take the Grounded 1 experience and level that out? So there’s a bunch of things, number one. We added, dodge into comeback, round two, we added, blocking for, creatures like, okay, how do we get analogs of those, into the underwater experience.
How do we improve the equipment experience? How do we make staying underwater for a long period of time more fun? At the end of the trailer, Max is there wearing a full-on diving suit with the light, and he’s in the dark, and it’s like, what the hell’s going on, and then behind him, you see, this gigantic toe biter.
MonsterVine: We’ve gone underground, then into the water. Are there plans to take us to the skies?
Parker: This question comes up a lot in the community. What I’ll say is this? We would love to have flying buggies. Are we ever going to be able to accomplish that? I’m not really sure, so uh? I’m super happy that we pulled off this amphibious toe biter buggy that’s coming up into the end of Into The Abyss, that it runs around on land and fights on land, and it swims underwater and fights underwater and does all the things that you wanted to do.
The fact that we managed to pull that off gives me some optimistic hope. Maybe we can do flying buggies someday. But I think you and the community need to know. Man, that could, that could just never work out, but you know, not to over-elaborate on this, but there’s a mod where they put gliders in a little while ago. I was thinking, why don’t we have gliders? We need to figure this stuff out. There’s always room to improve. But then again, I can’t promise anything; they’re just parts of our hopes and dreams as well.
MonsterVine: Are there any plans to add humans walking around the park or even dogs?
Parker: People and dogs are just too gosh, darn big. They’re just too large, but if you’re looking at things like a rat?
Maybe a really tiny dog, like a Chihuahua puppy, or something like that. I think that there is an opportunity there. I don’t know if that’s an opportunity we’re going to ever be able to bring to the fans, but again, the community wants stuff like that, and we would love to do it.
MonsterVine: Is there anything else you’d love to highlight that I didn’t ask?
Parker: We’re really excited about Grounded 2 coming to PlayStation 5 this summer. We didn’t have a PlayStation 4 or 5 for Grounded 1. They came out well over a year after Grounded 1. They came out way, later.
For us to be able to pull that community in and start having them actually contribute to all the conversations and the growth of the game is amazing. It’s something that we’re super excited about.
