grounded

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Obsidian Entertainment is a studio whose name has become synonymous with quality. This is why when it was announced that grounded, his new project, would be a survival game no one really raised an eyebrow in confusion. The project hit Early Access in 2020 and immediately became a hit with millions of players.

More than 2 years have passed since the premiere of grounded and its version 1.0 is already just around the corner. In all that time, Obsidian Entertainment has done nothing but listen to its community to find ways to improve the project, making the necessary adjustments and improvements. It has been a long and complicated road, but was the final goal worth it? We will review it in our review.

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A little experiment that turned into something more

Obsidian is a studio known for great RPGs. In its history, it has given us great games like Pillars of Eternity Y Fallout: New Vegas. With grounded, a small team within the studio decided to do something smaller and more experimental. The result is a survival adventure in a completely different context. Instead of being taken to a desert island or a world where dinosaurs rule, here you will be a tween who has been shrunk and is now trapped in a garden.

Movies like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids we have been taught that the world would be vastly different if we were the size of a fingernail. A grass would be a huge tree; our everyday objects would look like gigantic monuments and even the smallest insect would become a predator.

Thus, one of the things that makes grounded feels unique is the way it plays with scale. A simple spider will be a fearsome monster that will make you run while your hands are sweating. At the same time, a drop of water will be enough to stay hydrated for hours, while a puddle will look like a pond. The way it presents us with a new perspective on the everyday is brilliant and gives it a unique personality.

The secret behind the success of grounded it’s that Obsidian understood that reinventing the wheel is unnecessary. Therefore, the foundations of grounded they are from a game that will be familiar to veterans of the genre. The studio avoided the path of reinvention to make a survival that respected the foundations of the genre seasoned with good original ideas. In this way, in grounded your mission will be to explore an unknown world to get resources and improve your base or equipment. This will help you to reach new areas or exploit better resources. The basics in the survival genre.

What gives the unique flavor to grounded it’s the context in his world, as well as how you relate to him. At no point is it intended to make you feel like you are forced to be immensely powerful or that your resources could be stolen by a more experienced player. The game gives you the feeling that you are in a sandbox with several options and then leaves you to take responsibility for your own fun.

As soon as you fall into the garden you will decide if you want to dedicate yourself to exploring to get to know its world and fill your encyclopedia of insects. Maybe yours is to build, so you will go to get resources to later analyze them and unlock new recipes. There is also the possibility of defeating the spider queen to get revenge for all the scares that her offspring will get from you. You still have the option to dive right into the campaign for an intriguing story with answers about how you became a miniature. It’s up to you.

Earlier we mentioned that grounded it’s a game with a lot of character, but it doesn’t get it just because of the way it plays with scale. Turns out Obsidian went to great lengths to make his entire visual identity feel fresh. At first glance, it may seem like a cartoonish game from the heap, and that is precisely the intention! But be careful, don’t let that fool you, since when you immerse yourself fully in his tiny world you will see that he has a huge heart that beats strongly for eighties nostalgia. The graphics, the art direction, the sounds and even the dialogue were able to take inspiration from old morning cartoons to create a world that makes you want to participate.

It should also be noted that grounded It has evolved a lot in recent years. If you played it at launch you will be surprised by the amount of new content, as well as its stability and performance improvements. It is a clear example of the great things that can be achieved if you listen to your community and keep all your promises.

You are responsible for your own fun

It is important to mention that ultimately grounded it’s not for everyone. It loads with various concepts and ideas that are normal in other survival games and make several move away from the genre. In this way, if you are a fan of this type of game, the following will matter little to you; if not, you should listen to it.

turns out grounded is a game that will never take you by the hand. Of course, he makes an effort to let you know that there are certain objectives to achieve to progress in the story, but he will never give you the exact steps to achieve it. Personally, we enjoy having the opportunity to lose ourselves for a while and being forced to understand how the world works in order to progress. However, we are sure that this design will cause many to lose patience and abandon it before making much progress. Perhaps the clearest proof of this is the low percentage of players who have the achievement for finishing the first dungeon.

Difficulty spikes are another element of grounded that will make more than one pull out a few hairs. in your time with grounded It will be common for each next objective to be much more complicated, either because there is some danger that decreases your life or simply because you will have to face more powerful and numerous enemies.

In this way, when you think you start to take control of the situation, grounded he punches you in the face to remind you that you’re less than a centimeter tall and that you’re prey, not predator. This would be great if the difficulty spike forced you to upgrade your skills, when really it just drives you to search for more powerful weapons and gear. So if a boss kicks your ass, your immediate reaction will be to search for resources instead of trying again.

This problem does not only lie in the difficulty spikes. In fact, it’s mainly the fault of a lackluster combat system. fight in grounded It’s no cakewalk and to truly squash garden bugs you’ll need to master a parry and defense system. Unfortunately, fighting is just boring and failed to convey emotion. We think it’s because most of the weapons are uninteresting and the bugs feel like obstacles, not formidable enemies.

We insist: those who enjoy this type of experience will love grounded. It’s great to explore on your own to find resources and then learn how to use them to get more and better tools. However, he is unfriendly, despite his cartoonish appearance.

Although it was possible to play grounded in Early Access for a couple of years, its version 1.0 just debuted and is what we are talking about in this content. Well they say that there are no finished games, only abandoned, and it is clear that Obsidian still has work to do.

Don’t get us wrong: grounded It has evolved a lot and its version 1.0 is a product that meets the quality standards that you expect from a finished release in quotes. However, the reality is that you will surely receive updates that will be great for you.

What we are going to do is that we ran into some visual bugs that, without ruining the experience, were evidence that it is a product that can still be improved. Fortunately, in our hours of play we did not find any crashes or other problems that we consider serious.

We also think that Obsidian could come back to do some quality of life improvements. In this sense, it has improved a lot compared to what it was in 2020, when we first tried it. Even so, we believe that it could improve on inventory management issues and even in the management of the interface and the map. There are several games that do it much better.

A great little adventure

In the end, grounded has great ideas and delivers a truly entertaining experience. It’s one of those games that are made for you to start a game and lose yourself for hours while you get resources, improve your tools and build the best base of all together with your friends. What started as a small and crazy idea evolved into an exponent that shines very strongly within its genre.

Of course, even if he does things well, we believe that grounded it’s an experience that many just won’t appreciate, and that’s okay! Especially since it’s available on Xbox Game Pass, so you can try it out with no strings attached to find out if you’ll quit in a minute or spend 100+ hours on it. We are talking about a game that will hit you and force you to discover its full potential, and once you do, you will see that it is a gem.

version 1.0 of grounded It will debut on September 27 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC. You can learn more about this survival title by clicking here.

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