In the announcement, Mikey Dowling, director of communications for Obsidian Entertainment, says “we can’t wait for players to step into Grounded’s backyard. In fact, community is so important to us at Obsidian, that we specifically wanted to bring Grounded to Xbox Early Access so we could gather and implement your feedback early in the game development process and ultimately build a better game.” Dowling goes on to say that Obsidian “will be adding content based on feedback from the community for everything from single-player story to new bugs and features,” and that players are encouraged to give feedback on any features or additions you might want to see in the game in future, and to let the devs know what you think after playing it through the Xbox Game Preview programme.
In Grounded, you’ve been shrunk down until you’re about 10mm tall, plonked into a backyard, and tasked with crafting, exploring, building, fighting, following the instructions of the mysterious BURG.L robot, and generally trying to survive long enough to figure out how to get back home. There’s both single-player, with a campaign story, and co-op for up to four players. If you’ve seen the Grounded trailer above, you’ll know there’s some pretty sizeable spiders lurking in that garden, but Obsidian’s prepared for this with an arachnophobia mode which allows you to alter appearance and audio effects.
Grounded won’t have achievements at first, but achievements will be added in at a later date.
Written by Heidi Nicholas
Hey, I’m Heidi! I’ve just finished studying a Masters in English Literature, but I’ve been obsessed with gaming since long before then. I began on the PS2 with Spyro, before graduating to the Xbox 360 and disappearing into Skyrim. I’m now a loyal RPG fan, but I still like to explore other genres — when I’m not playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, or being lured back into Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3!
