A few weeks ago I was informed of this new game by Obsidian that was being prepped for Early Access, and that I needed to try it as soon as it was unleashed into the hands of the masses.
A game called...
Grounded.
The past couple of nights we've spent about 7 hours in the game. Anyone who knows me also knows that I love my sleep and am usually passed out by 9:30pm at the latest, but this game, and probably the company I was playing with, kept me awake til 1am two nights in a row, haha.
Fun fact: despite that, I've been waking up actually feeling awake, refreshed, amazing!
Anyway, so far my main impression is: the game is very challenging. And terrifying. Not terrifying like zombies coming at you in a giant horde when you're unprepared in 7 Days 2 Die, but it's still pretty terrifying.
This menacing beast leapt out of the ground and killed us in one fell swoop. It was the first spider seen in the game and it was so bloodthirsty and difficult that we mistakenly thought that spiders were a rare occurrence.
Turns out that Grounded may as well be called Australian Garden Simulator because all of a sudden we've become inundated with orb weavers. And they're not even weaving orbs! They're scurrying around on the ground, we're hiding, bated breath, trying to slowly sneak past, when another one will come up from behind and pounce upon us. Somehow we kill it, and it's death summons two more.
OHMYGOD.
I won't lie. I've been squealing. And it's a good thing my gaming buddy loves me because last night a spider snuck up and leapt on him and I literally shrieked, "SEE YA!" and piss-bolted made a tactical retreat.
"I see how it is!" he calls after me. "Leaving me here to die!"
Then I laughed my arse off while apologising profusely.
Seriously though. These spiders. We're playing on medium difficulty so not hard, not easy, but it is so very challenging. You are terrified when a spider comes at you. At the same time you feel amazing when you kill one. THEN YOU ARE TERRIFIED AGAIN WHEN MORE POP OUT TO EXACT THEIR REVENGE.
Other than spiders though... there is a story woven in with this, but it's very minimal and because it's Early Access I wasn't even bothering to pay attention. I prefer to care about such things when games are actually finished and released.
We're shrunken teenagers exploring the backyard jungle and trying to survive; that's all I know.
For some reason there are miniature computer systems and robots and things hidden in the grass, as though waiting for us shrunken kids to find and use them, and use them we do! To analyse all the bugs we kill and various items we find.
The crafting system seems pretty good. As you analyse materials you learn how to make things out of those items. Typical things like the axes, shovels, hammers that are necessary to these types of games, also armour and what-not.
My first bit of armour was made out of clover, so cute:
You can also learn the materials required to start building up your base, a nice safe place to call your home:
One of the things I've been really impressed with is just how smoothly it runs. We're playing multiplayer perfectly fine, no lag at all. We've experienced no glitches, no crashes, and the graphics are lovely!
Just look at these!
My personal issues with this game as we played are things that can easily be adjusted.
The difficulty balancing really needs to be balanced a bit more. Stamina is used far too quickly. Water is far too scarce, food spoils way too quickly.
It would be amazing if crafting items in chests would show up in the workbench so you didn't have to sort through so much crap.
Just little things like that. I'm a simple person, not an in-depth beta tester, haha. 😉
But still...
ALL MY FOOD SPOILED. AT ONCE. AFTER A BARE COUPLE OF HOURS.
I like the game and it'll be interesting to see how it goes in the future.
We won't be playing much more of it for the time being -- we're going to be moving on to Dying Light shortly -- but Grounded is definitely something I could see myself playing for quite a while once it's actually released.
If you're interested, you can find it on the Steam Store HERE but it's also available on the Xbox Game Pass which is how I'm playing it. $1 for the first month. 😉 How could I say no?
Until next time,
Thank you for stopping by! ❤️