When Grounded was first teased by Obsidian Entertainment, it showed a ton of potential. The concept of getting shrunk has been done before in movies, but never really in a video game.
Grounded brings to life these ideas perfectly, where players — now much smaller — must move through ordinary situations like their life depended on it. Grounded has now been out for a couple of days and in that time, it has gone on to achieve a lot of players.
In fact, in just 48 hours, game director Adam Brennecke is reporting that the game has achieved over one million players. That’s quite the achievement that Obsidian Entertainment should be proud of. It’s clear people love the open sandbox design and co-op opportunities.
Who knew exploring a pretty common backyard would be this much fun? Of course, things are much different when you’re the size of an ant. You have to be on guard at all times for things like large spiders and ants themselves. That tension keeps you invested the entire time.
In online matches, players will start out building shelters and collecting resources to help them survive these backyard perils. Weapons and armor can be crafted to give you and your team the upper hand most of the time. Even still, you’ll have to band together and tread lightly as the backyard is filled with all sorts of lingering threats.
If you don’t want to play with others, that’s completely ok. There is a single-player campaign for those that want to make it through the elements and insects alone. Whichever way you decide to play, you’ll have to adapt to your surroundings and keep evolving your strategies as the world outside is a pretty hostile place.
Grounded has had an amazing start, but Obsidian isn’t just going to rest on its laurels. They plan on putting out regular updates to improve gameplay and provide themed content. That should give players plenty of content to look forward to for the rest of 2020.
If you haven’t yet picked up this open sandbox survival game, you can get it on Steam or use Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service. The latter option is an incredible deal because the service charges a low monthly rate and you’ll gain access to a lot of other incredible games.
It will be interesting to see how popular Grounded still is after a couple of months. Some noteworthy updates may keep it going strong for the foreseeable future.