Grounded Review – IGN
As someone who played it during its early access period, I was immediately surprised by how much Grounded has evolved for its 1.0 launch. It feels like its not only fulfilled the potential of its Honey, I Shrunk the Kids survival premise, but exceeded nearly all of my expectations of it. Even though its still plagued with mostly harmless bugs (the software kind) that can annoy, I enjoyed practically every minute of the over 100 hours Ive played so far of this stunningly creative and consistently funny adventure, and it easily stands shoulder to shoulder alongside some of my favorite survival games.
Grounded is a survival game first and foremost, but draws a ton of inspiration from Obsidians history as a team of RPG wizards as well. Youll split your time between scavenging the charming backyard setting for materials, crafting awesome items from the corpses of your enemies, building badass structures to protect yourself and your stuff, fighting giant bugs that gave my co-op partners nightmares, exploring extremely difficult dungeons, leveling up your characters stats and equipment, and more. Numerous character progression mechanics, an enemy weaknesses and resistances system that had me poring over data in the menu, the elaborate boss fights, and NPCs and dialogue options that break up the action all make it feel more like a roleplaying game than most of its survival peers. Admittedly, there arent very many NPCs to find and most story development is either told via collectible audio recordings or locked behind hours of survival gameplay and a bit of grinding, but Grounded strikes a great balance between making you feel on your own in a hostile backyard and meeting quirky characters, most of whom inevitably try to maim you.
Groundeds tale of shrunken children in search of a way to return to their normal size isnt always front and center; you might spend a dozen hours gathering supplies and improving your base without that goal ever coming up. But when it does take the spotlight, it shines by being utterly ridiculous and laugh-out-loud funny. One of your main allies is a fiercely annoying, spatula-handed robot whos programmed to cook burgers; the bad guys name is Director Shmector; and you spend a lot of time running around collecting a currency called Raw Science Grounded just never takes itself seriously, to hilarious effect. In fact, one endgame reveal was so over-the-top and wonderfully stupid that it caused both of my teammates to remove their headsets for a few minutes to walk it off as I howled with delight. I wouldnt trade that moment for anything, and Groundeds remarkably idiotic story is positively chock-full of them.
Even with memorable characters, though, the star of Grounded is hands-down the backyard itself, which is completely beautiful and oozes personality from every blade of grass. One inhospitable and extremely rude area of the yard has an overturned charcoal grill that acts as a volcanic mountain range, while another has a leaking bug bomb that fills the area with a noxious gas and mutated insects. A childs sandbox becomes a hysterical, hostile desert where staying out in the sun for more than a few seconds causes you to burn up, so youve gotta dart between patches of shade for cover. A koi pond becomes a terrifying and deadly game of cat and mouse as you explore the waters depths and avoid the oppressive gaze of the ponds gilled master. Every tiny patch of grass acts as its own distinct area, with its own host of increasingly dangerous creatures, things to discover, and obstacles to overcome, and the attention to detail and creativity born from that never stopped making me smile even small things, like how you have to collect drinkable water from blades of grass that carry a single drop of dew, are excellent little touches.
And although you and your friends have been shrunk down to the size of an ant, Grounded is anything but small. Thats because the handful of main story quests are gated behind your character unlocking perks to get stronger, gathering materials to upgrade and maintain your equipment, and making improvements to your base to make life easier, like by creating ziplines to travel quickly across the massive map. In the over 100 hours Ive sunk into it so far I never came even close to running out of things to do, and although I now feel like I know the yard like the back of my hand, its still overwhelming just how big the place feels. I feel like Ive still yet to scratch the surface in a lot of ways.
Part of what makes Grounded so immensely addictive is the fact that it gets so many things right with its sandbox, from building and resource management to exploration and combat. What starts out as a pretty straightforward set of building blocks with base building quickly proliferates into downright insanity that goads you into unleashing your creativity with multi-story buildings, ziplines, trampolines, and housing for your pets. This alone can soak up hours of your time as you work to perfect your tiny dwelling with all the modern accommodations a miniature child might want, like a cooking station for making delicious insect-based foods, a comfy leaf bed for a nights rest, or a garden for growing your own mushrooms and the like. In my groups case, we built our home into the side of a massive oak tree, and over the course of our playthrough our structure steadily climbed up the twisted roots and branches until it felt like a proper fortress. Placing items and getting the spacing just right isnt always perfect and sometimes the finicky controls for placing structures can result in wasted time or resources, but its flexible enough so that you can build around most environments or else tear off whats there to make it your own.
When you arent building your micro utopia, youll venture out into the hazards of the comely backyard in search of adventure and supplies to bring back to your fort. This part of Grounded feels much more like a proper RPG adventure than a standard survival game, with melee and ranged combat mechanics that often require precise timing or that you make clever use of equipment, smoothies (Groundeds potion equivalent), and the environment. In my case, I sought to become a proper melee tryhard who used perfect parries to swat away incoming attacks, wear down the enemys stamina, and stun them into oblivion, while my party members dealt death from afar with an arsenal of elemental arrows.
Like many things in Grounded, combat starts out as a fairly straightforward affair and quickly escalates into a complicated algorithm that might call for an Excel spreadsheet if you were to map everything out. Early on, youll mostly just be blocking, attacking, and navigating the sometimes-tricky terrain to achieve victory all table stakes of a standard survival game. But as youre introduced to beefier and meaner enemies, as well as the inhospitable environments they call home, youll have to do research, make decisions about what to craft, upgrade, and carry with you, and switch up how you bring the fight to the insect antagonists. When you enter the Haze area, for example, youll need to wear a gas mask to protect against poison, and prepare for things that can fire at you from afar or, worst yet, run up and explode in your face, dealing massive damage to your equipment, which may call for you to bring some ranged options of your own. In another area thats swarming with powerful larva creatures that deal sizzling (essentially fire) damage to you, youll likely have to rely on melee weapons, well-timed blocking, and fire protection since enemies come at you so fast and in such great numbers.
And when facing particularly daunting boss fights or powerful enemy mobs, youll want to look up their weaknesses and resistances to know how best to approach the encounter. One enemy might be weak to slashing attacks and salty elemental effects, while another is weak to blunt weapons and spicy elements. All of these things will have an impact on the equipment and strategies your team deploys to achieve victory and youll need all the help you can get because lots of areas and dungeons are downright nasty and unforgiving.
Thankfully, Grounded has a wide variety of enemy types youll go to war against. One area of the backyard is dominated by the foul stench of some nearby trash cans, calling for the use of a gas mask. This area becomes infinitely more deadly when you learn that a flying enemy carries around spoiled meat, which breaks your gas mask in seconds if they get too close. The sandbox area, on the other hand, is filled with antlions that can burrow underground only to emerge seconds later from beneath and deal massive damage if you arent prepared for it. Even after 100 hours I was still finding new enemies I hadnt fought yet in fact, my Pokdex still isnt complete yet!
Most areas within the backyard present their own challenges that require you to adapt, like an underwater dungeon that forced me to swap out my trusty arsenal for equipment that would help me survive the liquidy depths, or another high atop a blueberry bush that challenged my platforming skills and bravery. Each of these dungeons have puzzles to solve and many even feature a boss battle at the conclusion that serves as an ultimate test of your preparedness and skill not to mention fitting finales to each chapter of the campaign.
That said, while running amok in Grounded is almost always a blast, it does occasionally subject you to some painful design choices that bring the good times to an abrupt halt. Chief among these issues is the absolutely tiny inventory space youre forced to work with in a sandbox thats absolutely stuffed with things it wants you to loot. If youre like me, youll have to stop the laughs and exploration to stare at a grid of precious items and face a Sophies Choice ordeal for what to bring with you and what to leave behind, and youre given almost zero opportunities to expand your storage space throughout the course of your journey. Even worse, if something youre carrying breaks and you dont have space to store it, your character will drop the item on the floor with no notification that youve left something behind. I cant tell you how many times I had to retrace my steps in search of a valuable piece of armor that snapped off me in the heat of battle.