Publisher: Xbox Games Studios
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Platform: XB1, PC
Genre: Survival Game

Preface: I was about to upload this a week ago, but because my computer was facing hardware issues like dead GPUs and faulty wiring problems, I had to go through a lot of trouble solving it. I finally got here by borrowing a friend's Graphics Card but lost lot of cash in exchange.

Imagine bugs being one day your feudal overlords and you have to fight for your freedom, everything changes when the Food Chain no longer puts you on the top. But you also get to explore the scientific wonders of the little people through the guise of shrunken kids as well as trying to find a way to return to their original form while finding out some experimentational shenanigans.

That's Grounded, one of Obsidian's charming survival game that puts you in the nitty-gritty of fighting ants, spiders, beetles and so on. But not everybody is a foe. In the insect kingdom, you must scavenge through a vast array of resources available to you and use them to set up camps, create makeshift weapons and arm yourself to the teeth while exploring your backyard personally battling every creepy crawlies.

But the game I am playing isn't finished, not even close. This is just a test-demo, sort of. There are story missions, objectives to do, errands to run. But at the most, what you have is a well set out foundation that only requires you to play and send feedback while Obsidian updates this game with content over the set of few months.

This will also be an Early Access review, meaning I won't score it, just giving you my two-cents on its current condition which could change in time.

Premise

Set in a usual suburban backward where a bunch of kids spending their time doing nothing much else in the 90s gets shrunk down, this game follows a somewhat typical Goonies adventure settings where the children find out that they're shrunken by a device they've stumbled onto created by a scientist, then must find him and return back to form.

Only problem is, the rest of the story isn't here, yet. Everything is just set around it so that you'll familiarize with the game before getting prepared for the rest of the content being added till somewhere in 2021 release date.

There's this whole Left 4 Dead and Honey I Shrunk The Kids vibe mixed in here, only big difference here you can't kill every creature you see. Some will instantly kill you unless you have the necessary equipment to tackle them. You're surrounded by different vegetation and terrain objects to use for crafting. Once you're ready, you can almost take any one of them.

The charm of this game comes from the wacky, zany Saturday cartoon kind of presentation with dashes of quirky sounds while obviously borrowing personality traits from their earlier games like Outer Worlds for the Sci-Fi part. It's Goonies and Jumanji all wrapped up in one tight package.

There are some interesting mysteries to explore as well, but it takes awhile to really get going. Not to mention the environment is tough and you're not getting much navigational help. Which I think to the game's standard is a nice challenge to add.

Gameplay

For a game about survival, the point of playing isn't on how to become a great warrior, it's about maintaining yourself by making sure you've taken care of your necessities before venturing into the wild and getting ostensibly adaptive with nature.

Necessities like food and water, these need to be filled once in every 15 minutes of play. You need to stock up on leaves, trunks, planks, fibers, etc for constructions. I didn't want to get involved with these chores so I just explored around the map and within 5 minutes, I got attacked by ant soldiers, killed by wolf spiders, the wildlife in this teeny tiny jungle is pretty brutal. It took me awhile to get a grasp of things. Making weapons, munition, snacks for basic needs, bandages to restore health and makeshift tent for sleeping through the night. You'll even need a torch in some points to explorer caves and other dark areas.

The only way to survive in this game is to craft, even if you die and leave your backpack full of stuff you've collected, you still have to pick stuff and craft. Yes, you can retrieve your backpack after death, this requires that you instantly collect the items and scatter off from the foe that killed you. But the other thing that can kill you is also starvation, you'll be running on fumes, so you need to fill up or find ways to stock up on food and water.

So two main things you do is survive and base building. In order to find blueprints for designs, you need to use analyzer machine and analyze every different material you have in your inventory. Once then, you scour through the jungle and get whatever is required to build specific stuff. Easy, right? Well the basis is covered, the rest comes down to hard work.

There are various objectives to do, side goals if you will do get items you want or need. Then there's the BURG.L, an A.I robot you find once finishing the first chapter of the story who will give you these quests and let you spend research points like Raw Science. These unlock new abilities and options for base buildings. You can chat up with him as well, he's voice by Josh Brener who played Bighead from HBO's Silicon Valley.

The game has a pretty steep learning curve in the first hour but it doesn't take long to learn everything even if the cumbersome menu gets in the way. I just hope they tweak the item management a bit better, sure it is appealing but function mostly matters and that's where am sort of worried. At least it has one hotkey for a wheel.

Grounded however, is a game that while it appeals seem to get you going, you need to realize the fun mostly comes from the cooperative experience. They can join in your game session via save files that you load. Even though this can also function as a single-player game.

While it took me 6hrs to fully understand the game, it took me a dozen more to get through almost every one of them to find new materials and unlock craftable items them from researching. Grounded is still missing content and Obsidian has stated that it is getting all of it with player's feedback till its release at 2021. Though with that being said, you should try figuring out what the ant kingdom is like. These guys seem scary at first, but they're just going by. Except for the ant soldiers.

Online

This is a 4 player cooperative experience tailored for communicating with players while doing obnoxious stuff around the jungle. Unfortunately if you don't have friends in your circle to play with, you're out of luck. The game has no public matchmaking of sorts. You can only join sessions from your friends list or just host and wait for them to join.

That being said, all hope isn't lost because Obsidian is adding these features in the near future. Right now, alpha stage. It's kind of a disappointment. I am hopeful for coming back within a couple of months for this game to check out more.

I would have tried this out for the review, but ah, C19 has not made things easier with anybody I know. Am going to leave it like this.

Presentation

Look at it. Everything from the caricatured characters to the flies, bees, ants, plants, leaves. This game even has great lighting effect with well added bloom and reflection. I mean you're playing on microscopic mud and dirt, everything here even with its cartoony demeaner looks pretty astounding.

Of course this being an Obsidian game, the soundtrack has some callbacks to their older games including Fallout New Vegas and Outer Worlds. Other than that, it's a usual slap on sticker kind of deal for the music of a game based on 90's influences like The Goonies.

Voice acting is another treat, Zachary Levi(Yes, that Zachary Levi who played Shazam) voices the doctor whom you go on a search for. All 4 of the playable characters seem to have decent VO, but the other star of the game is also the ants. Every one of them sounds quirky like your Pixar flicks. It has that charm.

Summation

It's not a finished game, but the potential is there. Just gonna have to wait for it. Most games I guess takes several years before getting off beta phase. God knows how Paladins is still stuck there. This one will be over in about a year or so.

Grounded is a game not for everybody because it involves micromanaging things, hunting, looting, saving up stuff, using your brain for many instances. But it gives you more inceptive to keep going and that's something to treasure. It has that allure factor.

Though I wouldn't suggest people to buy this now, you can play it via game pass. It's a good time to invest in with some nostalgic feels. I can't score this right now though. It's not there yet.