Grounded 2 | Review-in-Progress

Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke July 29, 2025Last Updated: July 29, 2025

1 1,157 10 minutes read

Obsidian Entertainment are on a bit of a roll lately, and a certainly proving themselves to be a crown jewel among the many Xbox Game Studios Microsoft currently owns. From the lovely Avowed earlier this year, to the upcoming release of the far bigger and more polished The Outer Worlds 2, for most studios, two games would be enough in one calendar year. But no, Obsidian had to go bigger…or perhaps in this case, smaller. They’ve partnered up with Eidos Montreal, and Grounded 2 is coming to Game Preview on Xbox Game Pass and Early Access on Steam today. I’ve been sinking in plenty of hours to bring you an early verdict. Welcome to the XboxEra Grounded 2 Review in Progress.

Honey, I’ve Shrunk The Kids…Again

Grounded 2 | Review-in-Progress | Image Credit: Microsoft

In case you’ve been hiding under a peblet, the original Grounded released back in July 2020, (following the same early access path now being followed by Grounded 2) before releasing in ‘1.0’ in September 2022. This four-player survival-action adventure has a pretty unique setting. Players embody characters that have been shrunk down to the size of ants by a device known as a SPAC.R, invented by a character named Dr Tully. The kids were kidnapped and experimented on by evil mega corporation ‘Ominent’, and now with the help of a robot assistant named BURGL, they engage in a battle for survival in a traditional american ‘back-yard’ while searching for answers to make themselves big again. The game was, unsurprisingly, extremely popular – two of my pals built things that honestly, beg belief.

The Original Grounded | Image Credit: Microsoft

Now Obsidian are back with a full-fledged sequel in Grounded 2. The kids, now 2 years older, have been shrunk once more, but this time are trapped in the enormous expanse of Brookhollow Park. The evil Ominent Corporation are once again involved, and there are plenty of questions as to why this has happened again. Is Dr Tully responsible? What has happened to BURGL? Unfortunately, being shrunk down to the size of a small insect causes some memory problems, (just like in the first game), so once again you’re tasked with surviving and finding a cure for your shrinking problem. I wont go into any more of the story elements here, as I know full well that players will want to discover this for themselves.

Small is BIG, actually

So first up, for existing Grounded fans, fret not. Everything you love about the original Grounded is present and intact, but Grounded 2 is a bigger, more expansive sequel with a ton of great ‘quality of life’ improvements. Brookhollow Park, the new setting for all of our miniature adventures is huge, though not yet complete, with unfinished areas cordoned off with in-game yellow tape.

The move from a back-yard to a community park is a novel one, with tonnes of unique biomes and landmarks to explore. From the tipped over ice-cream cart with is chilly, icy regions, the still smouldering lands of the not-quite-extinguished fire-pit, to the dark and warren-like caves of ant nests, you’ll find plenty of challenge and variety in the adventure ahead.

I was surprised at how easily I acclimated to this new area, though venturing further would find me somewhat lost and having to resort to the in-game map for better directions. Players can place trail-markers to label various locations, resources and ‘wonders’ – basically landmarks – and you can enable these to visible at all times. If you ever need to make a run for home when under threat, it’s fairly easy to do.

The game starts you off in a nice tutorial area, equipping the player with a SCA.B device on their wrist, which is where you can view your in-game map, gear and items you carry. This early location (underneath and in front of a now-closed ‘snack bar’) is primarily there to show you the ropes, and there’s a fairly lengthy onboarding tutorial of sorts that helps players old and new get acclimated to Grounded 2’s systems quickly.

A Hoarder’s Delight

Per the staple of any survival-crafting game, Grounded 2 tasks you with keeping yourself alive. That means food, water and shelter are top priority but thankfully there are plenty of resources to gather and craft to help make life easier. In the early game, you’ll be scrounging for wild mushroom stalks, the occasional weevil and dew from the tips of grass come the rise of the sun, which can be knocked down for a quick slurp of some clean water.

One of the biggest changes to Grounded is it’s no longer necessary to craft an axe, spade etcetera separately. Instead, we now have the Omni-tool, which does it all, and saves precious inventory space for you. With it you can repair your structures, chop down grass, dig grubs out of their holes in the ground or break apart larger pebbles. In the first game, each venture outside had the player having to decide which tool – axe, spade, wrench or hammer to take with you – with some of those tools doubling up as a weapon if needs be. There’s definitely a bit of streamlining going on, and your mileage may vary as to whether it is to your taste.

Upgrading the Omni-tool to allow for higher tier loot and resources, along with a lot of the games base-building and décor options are locked behind a resource called ‘Raw Science’. This glowing purple blob can be found in its pure elemental form out in the open world (and usually in hard to reach places), but can also be earned by scanning new items and resources at a Ranger Centre. These are hidden, miniaturised facilities built by Omninent for their shrunken staff, but can be used by you to unlock precious new upgrades. Before you know it, you’ll have all the creature comforts you desire, and you can start automating water collection, food growth and more.

To Build A Home

Base-building, a staple of the original Grounded is back for the sequel, with players able to make a defendable location almost anywhere. Foundations can be set, formed from clay and peblets, grass floors and walls, windows, stairs – it’s all pretty easy to do, and honestly, a lot of fun. It operates on a magnet system, with the player able to adjust angles and placement and rely on that system to quickly erect impressive structures. For more delicate placement, say a desk or lamps, pictures etc, players can disable the magnet system to place items free-hand.

Once our team had unlocked grass and weed-stem pallet storage, we got to work, with me placing the blueprints for our miniature home piece by piece, while the rest of the team looped back and forth to gather the resources I needed. If you place an item incorrectly, it can be recycled, but it’s a smidge annoying to see all the individual components fall to the ground, forcing me to run around and tidy up. It’d be nice if they were automatically transferred to the player instead.

I am however, a little disappointed that I couldn’t build anywhere I wanted. I had spotted a nice looking circular area that formed part of the base of a lamp-post, but after making our way there, the game wouldn’t let me place any structures there. In the original Grounded, base locations didn’t seem to be so restrictive. Weirdly, it did let me start building on a wooden post next to it, so I’m not quite sure.

Stronger, sturdier building unlocks can be obtained by finding better materials, which usually requires a combination of exploration, resource analysing and upgrading your omni-tool. The amount of resources required to build some of these structures is pretty daunting, and it would assuredly suck to have to do all of that back-and-forth on foot. Thankfully, in Grounded 2, we’ve got some help.

Take Me For A Ride

One of the big banner features of Grounded 2 is the addition of ‘buggies’. Early on in the game, you’re tasked with fetching each player a red solider ant egg, which required an expedition deep into an ant nest. With the new hatchery built, and one furious battle and hasty escape on foot with the aforementioned precious cargo later, we’re ready to bring our own bugs into the world.

The buggies take a little while to mature, so we built an ant nest in which to store them while we waited. Once born, they can be deposited in the nest when not in use, and you can name and assign a personal ant to each player. It’s a fantastic addition, and further explains the size of the new open world, Brookhollow Park – these ants are fast and making getting around a breeze.

Exploration, traversal, resource gathering – it’s all made so much easier, and arguably more fun with our buggies in tow. There is a ‘Resource Tracker’ unlocked at some point in the game, though it didn’t make much of an announcement of it, and I ended up stumbling across it by accident. It allows you to scan areas you’ve explored for potential resources, so you can take the team and your mounts to go and gather what you need. They have their own inventory, so you can store items in there, they can lift an impressive number of weed stems and grass planks. They’re also extremely useful in combat.

Be Prepared

Outside of natural resources like plant fibre, peblets and grass seeds, you’re frequently going to need parts from some of the various species of insects that live with you in Brookhollow Park. Some bugs are natural predators, meaning they’ll attack you on sight – from the tiniest red mite to the terrifying wolf spider. The harder the enemy is to take down, the more precious the resource. Thankfully, combat has been overhauled a fair bit, and there’s plenty of challenge here.

Our miniature heroes can now dodge, which is a marvellous thing to be able to do at a pinch, provided we have the stamina for it. You can play the game in either 3rd or 1st person, and while you could play in 3rd person in the original, it was a pretty wonky experience. Thankfully, after extensive testing, that’s not the case in Grounded 2, and I spent the majority of my playtime playing from a 3rd person perspective.

There are a variety of classic RPG-like builds you can prioritise, from ranged play with a crafted bow and arrows, heavy hammer like weapons, swords, dual wielded blades and what is effectively a wizard’s build, with a ranged area of effect attack via a ‘Candy Stave’. All of these weapons are built from plant and animal parts you can scavenge – my personal favourite was a sword crafted from a mosquitos needle-like nose.

Players can choose to pursue all of these or course, but each item takes up a space in your inventory. All weapons and armour have different qualities, and can be repaired and upgraded to higher levels – should you have the resources for it. There are pendants you can apply that have a variety of effects, from an extra acidic burst of damage in the final lunge of your three-hit combo to always having a dandelion tuft so you can jump from heights and float down safely.

Your buggies too can be very handy in a fight, and you ants can bewilder and recruit a standard worker ant to follow them, who will team up in attacking any would be bugs that should challenge you. You can attack while mounted, with your ant capable of a charged up and standard attack, but you can also dismount, and they will continue fighting with you.

Lastly, there are milk molars strewn around the map for you to discover. The white ones can be collected and spent by individual team mates on upgrades for themselves, be it more health or stamina. The gold molars instead apply to the group, providing access to more items per inventory slot, and so on.

Bug Hunt

As you might expect, the biggest (or smallest) stars of Grounded 2 are the many different creatures that roam around the enormous open world. All the bugs I remember from the original are here, from ants, Ladybugs, Orb Weaver Spiders and gas-spewing Stink Bugs. New notable always-hostile-beasties are the Scorpions, who can burst out of the ground in groups, venom packing, making you scurry back to safety. New as well are snails, who shrink back up into their shells if you try and attack them, and caterpillars, who…well, they just seem to die. Killing them make me feel bad. Same goes for butterflies, who have a cool defensive wind attack with their wings.

Combat is always fun against most, be it the smaller more easily seen off bugs to much larger prey, who can be pretty challenging. Learning their attack patterns, weaknesses and gearing up accordingly is key to survival in Brookhollow Park.

Sadly, many of the larger ground based bugs are just as ‘cheesable’ in Grounded 2 as they were in the original game. What should have been an epic battle against a ferocious wolf spider ended up with me perched up on a branch, safely pumping 50 arrows into his face as he roared from afar, unable to path-find a route to dispose of me accordingly. Equally, I’ve experienced a number of occasions where bugs would render almost completely clipping through the ground, leaving me searching for a threat I literally couldn’t see as they bit me from below. I also had a number of mid-game and loading into session crashes, which was a bit frustrating. There is a Day One patch on the way before public launch, and as it’s early access, bugs are to be expected as Obsidian work with the community to make Grounded 2 as beloved as its predecessor.

Stay Grounded

If you’re a fan of the original game, I’d say there’s nothing ground(ed) breaking here. In fact, it’s very easy to like Grounded 2 because in many ways, it’s the first game again, albeit at a much bigger scale, with new mysteries to solve and an entirely new map to explore and survive in. The core strengths of the original are here and intact, from the gorgeous world and solid survival mechanics, to another intriguing story to unpack, but I can’t help but feel there should have been more from the start that feels truly new. Still, it is a lot of fun, and as we begin another early access journey, this peblet and clay foundation is pretty solid – I can’t wait to see what else is in store.

Code provided by the publisher for this early access review.