What’s coming in the Grounded 1.0 update
Grounded is one of the many highly rated survival games on the market and has not been officially released yet. With over 26,000 user reviews on Steam, scoring the early access game in total a 9/10.
Developed by Obsidian Entertainment and picked up by Xbox Game Studios as a publisher to support this indie title. Grounded’s concept holds an interesting premise where users play as shrunken down humans trying to survive in a suburban backyard full of dangerous insects—it’s basically the video game version of the cult-classic 80s movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
At Gamescom 2022, Game Director Adam Brennecke and Xbox Lead Phil Spencer announced that Grounded was set for an official launch in September 2022 with the 1.0 update.
The Grounded 1.0 update is the biggest change to the game yet that will finalize the vision the dev team has set for Grounded with many new features and content for players to get their hands onto.
Will the update be substantial enough to transcend the survival genre and usher in new players? Or will it be an update only fans of the game can appreciate?
The 1.0 update
A story mode is on the way to unpack why on Earth your players have ended up ant-sized and lost in a backyard. There will be cinematic cutscenes and characters with voiceovers, and you can play through the story mode solo or co-op.
Ultimately there will be a conclusion to the story that might end up with your player escaping the backyard to return home and transform back to their original size.
Obsidian Entertainment has been silent on the story’s conclusion, with Adam Brennecke mentioning to ‘expect surprises.’ So expect the unexpected, like a plot twist. You could also receive rewards, maybe an unlocked map such as the house! Or new game modes to experience.
New explorable zones
Speaking of maps, the 1.0 update has confirmed an additional area of exploration in the current map that will finalize ‘The Upper Yard’ and ‘Upper Pond’ areas of the map and its surroundings, including the house porch.
The trailer also showed a glimpse into the Undershed biome, a cave system under the shed that exists on the current map, but rocks currently block off the entrances.
Populating these new biomes on the map will be additional items to loot and enemies to fight, such as new boss battles, including the much-requested praying mantis!
Base building
With larger areas and more significant threats, base building has also been expanded upon by adding more materials for base building, such as mushroom bricks. New materials will allow you to create more styles & designs for your base.
In the Grounded 1.0. trailer, many electrical-grade materials were previewed and likely could be included for base building for further modernization.
A promising future
With Microsoft’s backing and the 1.0 update set to make Grounded one of the most polished survival games on the market—Grounded has a promising future after release.
Obsidian Entertainment wants to open their game up to as many people as possible, which is why the game includes an Arachnophobia mode that lets you control the level of detail on spiders in the game, having the ability to make them look like blob objects. So if fear of spiders is holding you back from this game, then fear no more!
That said, the game has already received 10 million players that played the game, and the number continues to climb with Grounded being included in the Xbox Game Pass.
Xbox Game Pass is a monthly subscription on PCs, Xbox consoles, and smart devices that lets you access a library of games. Game Pass continues to expand by allowing users to stream video games on all types of digital devices, now including Samsung TVs, after a deal between Microsoft and Samsung was made in May 2022.
Between January 2021 to January 2022, Game Pass has gone from 18 million users to over 25 million users. The sharp rise is promising, and Grounded is staged to be the go-to survival game on the subscription service that could also be a gateway into survival games for younger gamers, given the game is rated a PEG 12.
