Grounded

You're having the definition of a bad day: you've woken up with a severe case of amnesia in a stranger's backyard. And you're also about 70mm tall. Surviving the myriad hazards of the giant backyard and finding a way of getting back to your proper size is not going to be easy.

Obsidian Entertainment, and their preceding incarnation as Black Isle Studios, have spent a quarter of a century crafting intricately-designed, well-written roleplaying games. They created the Fallout franchise as Interplay's inhouse CRPG team, crafted Planescape: Torment (still often cited as the greatest CRPG of all time) as Black Isle Studios, and as Obsidian delivered the critically-acclaimed (if janky) Knights of the Old Republic II, Alpha Protocol, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, among others. In the last decade they have been heavily involved in creating retro-style CRPGs with the Pillars of Eternity universe and the chronically underrated Tyranny, as well as returning to full 3D, first-person CRPGs with the decent-but-unspectacular The Outer Worlds.

It's therefore a surprise to see Obsidian turning around and making a survival and crafting game, especially a somewhat cartoony-looking one, apparently designed to appeal to children. But, first impressions aside, Grounded ends up having more in common with their previous roster of games than you'd think.

Grounded plays like many such games in the genre, but its mix of accessibility and a strong focus on story makes it feel like a spiritual successor to Subnautica, the previous "survival game for people who don't normally like survival games". Like that game, you start off in a highly precarious position, effectively abandoned in a hostile landscape with no food, no water, no weapons and no real idea of what to do. Fortunately, you quickly discover miniaturised shelters and supplies scattered across the backyard, confirming you're not the first victim of the shrink ray (and, if playing in co-op mode, Grounded's ace card for gameplay, that quickly becomes obvious). You also soon find a friendly miniature robot who quickly sets you on the road to success. As with Grounded's aquatic predecessor, it's impressive seeing how quickly you can go from having nothing to living in a massive base protected by tough defences.

Grounded deviates from that game in one very major way: combat. The yard is crawling with hostile wildlife, including mosquitoes, wasps, bombardier beetles, stinkbugs, and angry little mites. There are other creatures who are indifferent or even friendly to you, but their bodies can be harvested for essential supplies or for food, including ladybugs, ants, aphids and weevils. Combat plays out like a simpler version of a Soulslike, with each creature have a distinct attack pattern heralded by animations and sound effects. Periodically you encounter larger boss creatures, who require much more work to defeat.

How much you like Grounded may depend on your attitude to combat in a survival game. If you see it as a good thing, Grounded is a great game with lots of varieties of enemies and how to handle them. If you see combat as a distraction from base-building and crafting, then the amount of combat in the game will likely get on your nerves.

Building and crafting is fun, but not massively necessary to complete the game. I constructed a very small, modest base with just the essentials for getting food, water and creating new weapons, equipment and armour. Later on I did erect a large tower and built ziplines from the tower to distant corners of the garden, allowing relatively rapid transit from a central base to other locales, which made the latter part of the game easier than might have otherwise been the case.

Graphically, the game is superb. This was the first game I played on my new nVidia 4090-powered system and the result is a glorious riot of colour and foliage, rendered impressively in 4K. I did experience occasional CTDs without an obvious explanation, which encouraged regular saving (you can also set the frequency of autosaves). Controls were responsive, and base-building was pretty easily accomplished. Inventory management could be a little better, with the sheer number of useful tools and the need to carry different armour loadouts (some armour renders you invisible to the creatures that armour is made from) making it easy to max out the three hotbars the game gives you, but it's not a major problem. The game is also playable from both first person and third person perspectives, which is very welcome.

The game's narrative provides a good sense of direction, and the story (initially unfolding via audio logs but later through more direct interactions with NPCs) is bittersweet, with some harsh decisions and character twists being revealed. There's also some branching to the narrative: going off-mission and exploring remote parts of the yard can open up new storylines or impact the main quest, leading to a better (or worse) outcome. There's one optional boss hiding in a remote corner of the yard whose defeat reveals major information about the story that otherwise you'll never encounter.

The yard itself is brilliantly-designed and one of the most entertaining recent game worlds. The central grasslands give way to the mysteries of the impenetrable hedge (with an important base located high up in its twisted branches) and the depths of the koi pond. If you can avoid the indestructible koi guardian of the pond and work out how to preserve your oxygen supply, massive underwater rewards await. Later, you can travel to the sandpit, a vast desert realm suffering an inconvenient antlion infestation, and once you can access to explosives you can penetrate the rockwall to the upper yard, a punishing new biome that will tax your fighting and survival abilities to the maximum. There is a good 50 hours of entertainment here for a focused playthrough aimed at completing the story as efficiently as possible; for those who want to build incredible bases or towers higher than the house, or grind for the best weapons and gear to fight the horrific broodmother optional boss, that enjoyment will easily last for multiples of that time.

Grounded (****½) is a big swing from Obsidian, far outside their normal wheelhouse, but one that pays off handsomely. The game is fun, colourful, good-natured but not without its grim moments, and constantly challenging. It is available now on PC and Xbox consoles, via the usual vendors and Game Pass.

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