rounded described in one word? Charm. Pure, unadulterated charm oozing from every pour of this game. Even before some friends asked if I wanted to play with them it always caught my interest. A novel game in all appearances like no other that took the idea “what if we made Honey I Shrunk The Kids: The Game” and ran with it so hard and fast they took off and flew away with the concept. But I had no idea just how much depth there was to this game and 130 hours later it’s very apparent just how special this game is. From the kids who are our main heroes. Normally in everyday life they'd be weak and vulnerable to the outside world but in this yard their meek strikes and childlike imagination make them Apex predators. To the music and sound effects listening to bugs snore, spiders bristle as they stalk in the night or kids geek out and gawk in disgust as they eat bugs and mushrooms. To the yard itself whether it be toys lost in the yard that serve as function, tape tracks, milk molars, sand pits that become kingdom walls or a picnic table with a DND set. Even the base elements of grass, weed stems, mushrooms and pebbles have an adorable art style that increases 10x when you use them to build your base. Grass tree-houses and tables made from clovers. The bugs of course are the star here, each with their own character whether they be deadly stalkers like the spider, territorial beasts like the Larva or Black Ox, food like the weevil or agile aphid or neutral (but you bet your ass you better not mess with these absolute monsters) like the… ladybug? Almost everything is a usable resource as you repurpose grass into shelter, bugs into armour just a lovely as the original (cultish helmets withstanding; ladybug, acorn and black widow I’m looking at you!). The base building is much more inventive than I could have ever known. With the ability to make castles, walls, palisades, grass plank pallets, farms, pet houses, beds, tables and chairs, food racks and even fridges! That’s before you even get into your workshop with the various crafting table, spinning wheels, anvil, smoothie mixer, grinder, etc. It all comes together to create a game that feels unique based on whatever your creativity conjures up. Never in my wildest predictions would I have imagined enjoying this game as much as I did.
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| The game has an arachnophobia censor option - yes they're that scary that when you hear one you run and hide. |
The game it’s core has an addictive survival loop. At a macro level the classic formula is here – build a base, venture out, gather resources, return to base, repeat. But it’s at the micro level that this really becomes special. You gather, survive and explore, find science and unlock new recipes to craft, upgrade your base which in turn lets you upgrade your armour further and expand your dominion of the backyard, exploring more and finding new resources to upgrade with. That is the heart of the game – and it’s pure gold. The three highlighted words are really what make this game special. Exploring allows you to discover that various charming locations of the yard but also research, gather science and progress. The map reflects this as well. Bugs are separated into tier 1, 2 and 3 and so are the weapons and upgrades they’re made from. Use the best of tier 1 to explore and find tier 2 bugs, upgrade, explore and so on and eventually you’ve explored the entire yard. It's hard to explain how clever the sense of scale and perspective is without experiencing it. But I’ll try anyway. It doesn’t matter where you are in the yard whether it be the kid case you spawn in, the highest peak, or swimming away from the monstrous koi fish but you can always see the House in the background. Not only this but there is a large oak tree which immediately draws your attention (and has the first science lab), a fence, shed, science equipment and a big !@#$ off crow. This dominating background consistently makes you feel small and you never forget where or what you are. It serves as a major factor in creating that immersion. From there you explore massive versions of every day items – battle toads, milk cartons, barbeques, chairs, etc that have a renewed sense of character and charm. The art style is a perfect choice in supporting this.
There are two stories happening in Grounded. Your personal story and the baked in plot. This is the first survival game I can remember playing that has an overarching story and a definitive end. The plot is secondary to your own story of survival but it was still interesting enough to keep me invested until the end. You wake up in a dark and dirty ditch next to what looks like a normally small case, except it's not. “Where are we? What happened?” say the kids. And from then on its up to you to figure out why you’re so small and get big again. First stop is the Oak tree, which is no easy task considering its where the Wolf Spiders sleep. Not only can they kill you in 2 or 3 hits unarmoured but they applied a heavy poison as well that can easily finish you off. Couple this with their many red eyes, immense size and the gurgling noise they make when they stalk through the grasslands and you have a terrifying AF foe in your way. Luckily it’s pretty easy to sneak past them and that’s exactly what we did. At the science lab you find BURG.L a charming robot left by Wendell who you eventually find out not only created the robot but everything in this back yard and is likely the one behind your shrinking.
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| Director Schmector - I'd be made if that was my name too. |
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| You get to use later with the Mantsterious Stranger mutation - fantastic Fallout reference. |
As fantastic as this story is and I do think
it provided a much-needed structure to the survival and exploration that a lot
of games are lacking - it was the sense of wonder and discovery in between that
made this game so special. Exploring the hedge which is absolutely chock full of
spiders, and hiding from wolf-spiders in the night at start as you attempt to
get a proper base and gear. Building your first Red Ant armour and then discovering
you’re now friendly to Red Ants which than allows you to explore their entire ant
colony and find the superchip within. Not only this but you can now steal their
eggs (they won’t be happy about that) and turn them into explosives! Unlocking
new areas of the game. It has a very Metroidvania feel to it. Mapping out areas
to return to when you have the necessary upgraded Tier 2 and 3 tools.
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| Those scary bugs at the start? You can now bait them into your many friends! |
Next was mastering the infected zones. Full of “infected” bugs due to a leak in a can of Weed Killer 420 (lol). That’s another thing worth mentioning, whether intentionally or not this game is full of inuendo. It reminds me of old school family shows like The Simpsons where a whole family can watch (or play in this case) and enjoy it with hidden jokes only the parents will understand. The infected bugs cause radioactive like explosions and unique quirks to mix up compared to their clean version. Next came the pond – and as much as I was tired of swimming by the end of it (really should have done myself a favour and focus on the upgrades first!) it was amazing to explore the underwater base. With it’s own set of bugs like the adorable tad poles and not so adorable bell spiders.
Next was the The Black Ant hill which gave us
a new Black Ant shield (being most important item in the game) and led us to a
lab where we fought the assistant manager. This was intense and after dying the
first time we spent a good 10 or so hours upgrading and harvesting blood
sausages (mosquito sacs) to prepare for this. The boss had several waves that
felt more in like with a Dark Souls boss. The robot itself shot lasers and
bubbles of electricity at you but would also summon his robot grunts and lasers
from large pylons which you had to jump or duck while fighting everything else.
It was incredibly fun and intense and the feeling of overcoming it felt like no
other in the game since or after.
After this came the Sand Pit. It was an interesting challenge as the entire area would “sizzle you” i.e. burn you to death from how hot it was. You had to kill Antlions to make armour to protect you from this and interestingly enough they were only found in the sizzle area. So to protect you from the sizzle in the area where you get the sizzle protection you had to fight them at night or draw them to the shadows which is what we did. Once we had the armour we were free to explore! With this armour area had a cool cowboy desert vibe. The sandcastle was interesting but disappointingly didn’t have much to it (no secret dungeon, come on!). The sandpit was full of quick sand holes with Antlion’s that would pull you in and destroy you. Killing them revealed an underground network of caves with valuable resources to upgrade your weapons.
It was at this moment we discovered how
useful ziplines were so we decided to level up our base a little. At this point
I had been growing mushrooms in about 20 farms much to the confusion of my
friends and now it was time to reap the harvest. I used them to not only build
a castle of mushrooms on the hill, but a tower so high that you could see the
entire yard in all its messy glory. This tower had trampolines that you could
use to boing boing your way to the top. And from here I connected ziplines to
each corner of the yard for easy access. I wouldn’t be surprised if this saved
us a good 10-20 hours in the late game as our base was quite central at the kid
case, so it allowed us to quickly access the tier 3 areas.
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| Zipline tower in the background was built on the castle and connected to all corners of the yard. An absolute asset. |
Last was the Uppder Yard, an interesting area, at first mysterious and full of terrifying tier 3 bugs. On the
left side you had the spilt BBQ which prevented you from getting up due to
sizzling (requiring us to get the antlion armour as previously mentioned). But
once we did we explored the canyons full of black ox bugs and pupa, and then
eventually the wood pile full of Termites. These were necessary to get the
(imo) best weapon in the game. The Tier 3 axe not only looked amazing as a
tomahawk but let you harvest must of the Tier 3 resources like pupa leather to
make Tier 3 armour). With it Wolf Spiders were now as threatening a threatening
as any tier 1 bug. The termites however were the bane of my existence. They
were so numerous and bulky you were fighting the durability of your gear as
much as them. I never died as much as I did in those burrows of wood. They reminded me of Tyrannids – swarms of
death bugs. Eventually we killed The Termite King and got everything we needed
but they were the only bug that I had zero interest in going back to and
actively avoided, giving me a sense of PTSD. The final quadrant of the yard let
us explore under the house full of spiders bugs and cob webs (and one big ass Brood Mother spider!) and we also finally found Wendell! But the yard also had some interesting
sections such as the stump with a giant Moth boss on top and acorns to make cool magical staffs! I loved the
toy army men jotted through the yard in various warlike scenarios. It reminded
of my sandpit as a child and the parachutable army men you could buy and throw
off our cubby house.
After finding Wendell our journey and the story came full circle. Or so we thought as there was still the Brood Mother and Mantis to kill. This was a lot easy than I thought it would be an it probably helped that were fully geared out to the max. The Brood Mother was a cake-walk due to how easy it is to telegraph spiders. It summoned spiders but one of us just distracter mumma while the others killed its babies.
The Mantis on the other hand had an
interesting move set with AOE earthquake moves and leaping swipes. All in all
both were great fights. Originally I was interested in getting all the
achievements but was turned off by one that required you to 100% the game which
included literally everything. Every milk molar and data log.... I warmed up to
the idea when I saw how few data logs were left but after attempting to collect
the few that remained it took forever. Then I did the math on and I noped out
of that… 17 Molar's, 13 Mega Molar’s, 8
SCA.B, 6/8 Mix'rs, 40,000 raw science. I would receive 18k from Mixr’s
and so need to grind another 21k from quests which give you 100-500 a pop, so
at a guess 1000 quests… Not only that but the Molar’s have no easy way to track
what you have vs. need. Meaning you would need to comb threw the yard for every
molar. Likely another 20-30 hours.... screw that. Instead of risking the game loosing it’s lustre (which it
already felt like it was) we just decided to do the final optional boss Director
Schemctor and finish it. Beating Wendell’s nemesis was no easy task. He summoned super powered ORC spiders, shut dozens of bubbles and lasers. All of which very deadly even this later game. Eventually we beat him after four attempts which cured Wendell and let him de-raisin (a process that
causes adults to shrivel up when they go through the shrink process). He returned to his wife and family and the kids all go to go home, get an education and
(presumably) grow up. A happy ending for all!
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| The gang stands over their prize. Left-right - Nathan, Me, Sandy. |
It's hard to express how much I love this
game and it’s easily the best survival game I’ve ever played. A friend of mine
said he’s always attracted to a game that just goes fully in on an idea and
commits to it. Deep Rock Galactic or Valheim come to mind and Grounded is no
exception. I shouldn’t be surprised
considering it’s made by the behemoth of talent that is Obsidian. As much as I
want them to make a new mainline Fallout game I would absolutely love to see a
4-player co-operative New Vegas survival game. Return to that exact setting and
give us the same experience we got in Grounded. Not only would it be amazing but it
would shit all over Fallout 76. Grounded is a phenomenal game for all ages that'll have you addicted to exploring every inch of Wendell’s backyard for hours
on end. I hope the DLC is good because even after 130 hours I’d love any excuse to continue exploring someone's backyard.
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