The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
Grounded is a survival game that can be played either in first-person or third-person. In the game, the protagonist is shrunk to the size of an ant and must strive to survive in a backyard. In the game, the player character (Max, Willow, Pete, or Hoops) needs to consume an adequate amount of food and water, or they will lose health due to starvation or dehydration respectively. The backyard is filled with various bugs and insects, such as spiders, bees, dust mites, ladybugs, and many more.
Different insects serve different purposes in the game. For instance, spiders are one of the game's apex predators that will hunt down the players, ladybugs can lead players to food sources, and aphids can be cooked and consumed for food. Players can also cut down grass to collect dewdrops. The game has an accessibility option for players who have arachnophobia, which allows players to decide how scary spiders are going to be in the game.
Story
In 1990, Peter "Pete" Boggs (Max Mittelman), Maxwell "Max" Smalls (Luke Youngblood), Willow Branch (Ozioma Akagha), and Ally "Hoops" Nguyen (Charlet Chung) are the latest four teenagers in a string of disappearances. The teens wake up to find themselves shrunken down to the size of a small insect and trapped in a backyard, but have no memory of how they were shrunk or how they ended up in the yard.
As the teens explore the yard, they come across recordings left behind by scientist Dr. Wendell Tully (Zachary Levi). R, which can shrink objects and people. R.
Development
Following the release of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, the team at Obsidian Entertainment began brainstorming ideas for a survival game. While the majority of the staff in Obsidian worked on The Outer Worlds, a small team of 13 people began the production of Grounded. The game was already in production before Microsoft's acquisition of Obsidian in 2018. Announced by Xbox Game Studios at X019 in November 2019, the game was released on July 28, 2020, for Steam's early access and Xbox Game Preview.
The early access version of the game featured about 20% of the game's main campaign, and Obsidian actively listened to the feedback from the community as they continued work towards the game's full release in 2022. The early access version amassed around 5 million players within 6 months of release. The game was fully released for Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on September 27, 2022, and versions for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 were released on April 16, 2024.
Reception
Grounded was met with "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received strong approval, being recommended by 84% of critics.
It was nominated for Innovation in Accessibility at The Game Awards 2020 and won the Xbox Game of the Year award at the Golden Joystick Awards. It also received a nomination for Action Game of the Year at the 26th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards.
