The original Grounded is one of my favorite Xbox and PC games released in years, but I don’t think any of us expected a sequel to arrive so soon. Obsidian Entertainment doesn’t know the meaning of rest, though, so Grounded 2 is already here in early access — and it’s bigger than ever.
Questions like “Did we really need a Grounded sequel?”, “Does Grounded 2 deliver on the hype?”, and “Should I play the Grounded 2 early access or wait for the full game?” are all completely valid, and that’s where my colleague (Samuel Tolbert) and I (Zachary Boddy) come in.
We gained early access to Grounded 2’s early access and have spent quite a few hours surviving the dangers of Brookhollow Community Park, and we both had a lot of thoughts on our bug-filled adventure. So, we decided to write this early hands-on review together to answer all your questions and then some.
Time to shrink down and get to business.
This early access review was made possible thanks to review codes provided by Xbox Game Studios. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.
Grounded 2 streamlines portions of its survival experience, but it’s still challenging
The developers made a lot of smart decisions with Grounded 2, and the key one that stood out to both Zachary and I immediately is the Omni-Tool. This handy gadget can morph into different tools, acting as a shovel, an axe, and more. Acquiring it (and its upgrades) is tied directly into the main story.
As a result, the very act of getting new upgrades is far more interlinked with progressing the narrative, a smart choice to help keep newcomers engaged.
Getting a base up and running is still important, and therein began our trials and tribulations. We didn’t want to wander too far from the first scientific outpost, which made it easy to scan materials, acquire RAW SCIENCE, and stay (relatively) safe. As a result, we decided to build a huge staircase reaching up to a new area, a place that would normally require a long walk to reach.
This required an inordinate amount of materials, fighting and finagling to make sure the foundation was set to support our work, which I’ll let Zachary tell you about even more. You know that scene in Friends where Ross keeps yelling “Pivot?” It was a bug-sized version of that.
Still, we succeeded in the end, and I’m quite happy with how our setup looks so far, with dew gathering and a water storage container making it easy to stay hydrated, removing the need to hunt for drops of water in the early morning. — Samuel Tolbert
Samuel already mentioned the Omni-Tool, but Grounded 2 does a far better job in another regard with introducing new players to the game — an actual tutorial area that’s interweaved into the new story.
Any players who struggled to adapt to the first Grounded in the beginning shouldn’t have any issues with Grounded 2, but don’t think for a moment that this game isn’t challenging. All the survival and combat elements that made the first game so satisfying to progress through thrives in Grounded 2.
Of course, you’ll also need to build bases and outposts to stay safe, rest and resupply, and provide crucial checkpoints when exploring the vast park. Samuel and I decided to build our first base near the beginning area, but it wasn’t the smoothest endeavor.
The moment we decided to build our base up on a cliff, I knew we were in for a few hours of (fun) frustration. I spent a lot of time messing with foundations and angles to support our initial staircase, and even when I did reach the top had to build a small bridge into the staircase to get over some annoyingly placed boulders.
I spent a lot more time, though, making minute adjustments to the center foundation of our base, so I could build our home on a level surface without clipping or random holes. This was seriously a case of moving a foundation an inch or two to the right to avoid a hill, then a few inches down to avoid a boulder, and so on.
Once the foundation was handled, though, it was smooth sailing from there. I’m quite proud of our little base, and setting it up before embarking on the next major story missing (which we’ve dubbed “The Great Egg Heist”) made a massive difference. — Zachary Boddy
The Great Egg Heist and the magic of Grounded 2’s buggies
After Samuel and I built a humble abode and handled our basic survival needs, we embarked on the next story mission: obtain a Red Ant Soldier egg from the Red Ant Hive. Neither of us knew that this simple objective would become a quest of epic proportions.
As good journeys often do, everything started out great. We headed toward our goal with the carefree glee of the unconcerned, chatting and gathering and hunting as we went without a worry in the world. Even once we entered the Red Ant Hive, we went remarkably far before finding the barest hint of opposition.
The Red Ant Soldiers that discovered us wayward intruders proved little challenge for our teamwork, so we followed the telltale signs of Ominent Practical’s presence in the hive with backpacks full of crimson insect parts. We took leisurely breaks, found scraps of story lore, and reached our goal with ease.
Neither of us noticed the Red Ant Soldier eggs giving off a subtle aura of evil, and neither expected “A New Hand Touches the Beacon” levels of alarm when picking up those eggs. It felt like we immediately drew the ire of every Red Ant on the planet, with new troops apparently teleporting in from the fifth dimension to hunt us down.
Intent on surviving with our treasures in tow, Samuel and I abandoned caution and sprinted full tilt through the Red Ant Hive, fighting every few steps before finally breaking outside — only to be met by a welcoming party of ravenous Red Ants, who were then reinforced by a curious Mosquito that Samuel and I were not equipped to handle in a chance encounter.
All of that would’ve been fine… But then the massive and terrifying Northern Scorpion showed up, and it ended up chasing me all the way back through the Red Ant hive while Samuel recovered from his untimely demise. We hadn’t even gotten our eggs fully outside the hive yet, it was the middle of the night, and everything wanted to kill us or eat us or both.
I’ll let Samuel take the story from here, but I’ll spoil the plot a tad by saying this: it was all worth it in the end. We named our buggies Ant-Tony and Hoopkins, and they get all the pets and love they deserve (and they deserve all of it, buggies are easily the best part of Grounded 2). — Zachary Boddy
It turned out we made a wrong turn, and ended up coming out of the ant nest at a dangerous spot hundreds of centimeters away from where we were supposed to be. Whoops!
With that mistake realized, we were able to make our way back, recover the eggs and frantically fight off an onslaught of ants as we ran back to our base, narrowly defeating the mosquito that was quite literally out for blood.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of the saga. We needed the materials for the hatchery in order to actually get our buggies. That meant venturing back out into dangerous territory, with massive scorpions and roaches roaming. Once again, we died, and it took successive attempts before we were able to gather everything we needed.
The results were absolutely worth it, and having a buggy completely changes how we’re approaching playing now. Resource gathering and exploration are far easier than before, and the bugs are also capable of lending a pincer in a fight, making it possible for us to take down the bigger bugs roaming the park. — Samuel Tolbert
A bigger, brighter place to play in
Straight way, it’s immediately obvious that Grounded 2 is a step-up on the technical level. The game’s lighting is simply gorgeous, with sunlight shining through the grass and setting a warm tone that can lull you into a false sense of safety if you’re not careful.
As day turns to night, things get eerily difficult to see, and any source of light (such as a helpful mold glowstick) is easily swallowed up by the dark if you venture too far.
Textures look better too, with more detail on the character models and the myriad bugs you’ll encounter. Scorpions are imposingly impressive, and I got so distracted my first time fighting one that I ended up dying, in part, because I kept trying to get a better look at it.
Still, this is an early access launch, and we’ve run into a couple of bugs. No, not those bugs, the kind that are more frustrating to deal with. While I saved frequently in our shared world, dying at one point and then loading back in caused me to lose my entire backpack. The strange part is that Zachary didn’t lose their equipment, and my other progress was kept.
We’ve also run into a handful of encounters where insect and arachnid parts disappear or drop through the world before we can grab them. It’s not super-frequent (and it’s been fortunately limited to common critters that are easily hunted) but it’s still worth noting. — Samuel Tolbert
One of the most frustrating bugs I encountered early on in Grounded 2 was infinite stamina drain. If I sprinted at all, my stamina would continue to drain even when just walking, and would only restore like normal if I drained my stamina completely (fortunately, changing to the “Push to sprint” option in settings prevented this particular bug for me).
There were plenty of other minor issues, and Samuel and I both observed frame rate drops whenever we used our buggies together (with me on Xbox Series X and Samuel on PC via Steam). None of that stopped us from having a blast, though.
And, as Samuel said, Grounded 2 really is gorgeous. Obsidian preserved that iconic art direction, but with upgraded textures, models, and lighting to bring everything to life in a new way. The new engine definitely makes a difference.
It’ll be interesting to see how Obsidian balances bug fixing and optimization while it adds boatloads of new content (including massive chunks of new park to explore) throughout Grounded 2’s early access, but the starting point is strong. — Zachary Boddy
Deciding if it’s worth gaining early access to Brookhollow Community Park
If you remember how content starved Grounded was when it first entered early access in 2020, then I’d understand any hesitation to hop into Grounded 2. If it’ll take two years for this game to feel like, well, a full game, isn’t it better to wait?
I don’t blame anyone for making that decision, especially since Grounded 2 is — at best — a third of the size Obsidian is planning for it to be. Even 33% of Grounded 2 is as big as 100% of Grounded at its 1.0 launch, though, and that’s not an exaggeration.
Hours of gameplay, and Samuel and I didn’t even see 80% or more of the map because there was so much to do in the opening area. Grounded 2 boasts all the telltale signs of early access with poor optimization and plenty of bugs, but the lack of content is not an issue. There’s a lot to do already.
We also know Grounded 2’s early access is a safe bet given Obsidian Entertainment’s track record, the success of the first Grounded, and the backing of Xbox Game Studios. I wouldn’t worry about this game being abandoned before it’s finished, and Obsidian has already outlined its ambitious early access plans, with regular (and massive) content updates.
I was hesitant to dive into Grounded 2 for work because I normally do prefer to wait for games to leave early access, but I’ve genuinely been having a blast with Grounded 2, and can’t wait to see where it goes from here. New map areas, more creatures, different kinds of buggies, story additions, gameplay and quality-of-life improvements — it’s all coming, and it’s honestly exciting. — Zachary Boddy
Like Zachary, I often eschew early access launches. Context is everything, and it’s sometimes beneficial (such as with Supergiant’s Hades 2) but that’s the exception, not the rule.
I’m also not the biggest survival game fan, though I enjoyed my time with the original Grounded, and I found it to be surprisingly polished at early access launch. Still, there’s no denying that the story content was fairly bare-bones until the Pond update and the 1.0 launch brought more to do.
That isn’t the case here at all. Several hours in, Zachary and I still haven’t managed to exhaust the story content that’s present. As they mentioned, we’ve barely explored a quarter of the map. Your mileage may vary, but there is more than enough here to justify jumping in on day one. — Samuel Tolbert
Our final thoughts
There’s a long road ahead for Obsidian with Grounded 2. There are a lot of bugs to fix, a lot of performance improvements to make, a lot of graphical settings and accessibility features to add, a lot of content and story updates to release, and a lot of engaging with the community to do.
It’s immediately clear to me, though, that the larger and more experienced team at Obsidian (now assisted by Eidos-Montréal of Tomb Raider and Guardians of the Galaxy fame) is taking every lesson learned from the first Grounded and applying them to the sequel from day one.
Grounded 2 is far larger and considerably more ambitious, but it’s also starting from a much stronger (and considerably more beautiful) place. This foundation is solid, and there’s already a lot of content to occupy the earliest players.
Buggies are a brilliant addition that fundamentally change how the game flows, and I love how the story is playing an even bigger role this time around (and how that story ties into a significantly improved new-player experience). I can’t wait to see where Grounded 2 goes from here. — Zachary Boddy
I was truly surprised to learn that Grounded 2 was happening, but I was excited to see it announced. After playing it for several hours, I’m even more excited to see where it goes from here.
2025 is being referred to as the Year of Obsidian by numerous people at Xbox and in the community, with the fantasy role-playing game Avowed launching back in February and the upcoming science-fiction title The Outer Worlds 2 set to arrive in October.
Grounded 2 sits in the middle of those two ostensibly bigger games, but it’s just as important a title for this storied studio. I’m eager to keep playing and see what happens next. — Samuel Tolbert
Grounded 2 is now available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC and Steam, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Xbox Game Pass in early access.
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