Grounded Review- A Survival Game With A Soul

Fighting huge bugs on my tiny Steam Deck.

This Steaming the Deck entry is a bit different. Instead of diving into an older game, I grabbed Grounded: Fully Yoked Edition. Inspired by the then imminent release of Grounded 2 and by having loved the few hours I had spent with the original during its Early Access launch, I bought it on sale for 19,99€ and played through the majority of it on my Steam Deck.

Here are my thoughts on being a shrunken teenager in a backyard, how pleasantly the game worked as a handheld experience, and why Obsidian is a precious studio that must be protected at all costs.

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Steaming The Deck is a series in which I cover titles that have been collecting digital dust in my Steam library for far too long, using my recently purchased Steam Deck as a perfect excuse to finally give them some much deserved love.

Grounded- The Steam Deck Experience

I played Grounded in Early Access with a couple of friends back when it first came out in Early Access. We all got a month of PC Gamepass for 1€ (RIP best gaming promotion ever) and spent a few weeks having a blast. Subnautica is one of my favorite survival games, and Grounded managed to scratch that specific itch. It is simultaneously cozy, stressful, and at times a literal horror game.

We played through what was available at the time, eventually moved on to other games and, for a multitude of reasons, never ended up returning to the yard. Back then I had played it on my PC on maxed settings and always in first person (I’m not sure if third person was even available at the time). A few weeks ago I bought the game to play it exclusively on my Steam Deck in Third Person. This turned it into a completely different experience.

I turned on the setting which allowed me to pick up and interact with items close to my cursor— turn this on if you are playing with a controller, with it off you need to precisely place the cursor on top of an item— and capped my refresh rate at 40hz. I had no performance issues at this target frame rate and the visuals were great regardless. Reaching 60 is possible but requires a considerable resolution hit, so I wouldn’t consider it worth pursuing. This game is demanding on a handheld system, so I was stuck with an average of two hours of battery life, which was fine.

Given that I’m usually a masochist, I jumped immediately into the hardest difficulty (named WOAH!). This is another thing I can’t recommend. While I’m a fan of challenges, Grounded does not do difficulty well. Insects get a massive HP and damage boost, equipment and tools break faster, thirst and hunger also build quicker. WOAH would be fine to play as a group of four (a full party), but as a solo it turns a lot of the game into a chore, especially if you try to stick with respawning instead of the dreaded save-scum tactic (which I shamelessly abused).

Loving A Game With A Soul

With that all being said, I absolutely loved the time I spent with Grounded. The story is simple, but the way it is told, the voice-acting, and the atmosphere are all way better than they ever needed to be. Most survival games stick with extremely basic stories told in an almost narrated fashion, but Grounded really immerses you in this enchanting world that Obsidian sculpted. Your character has a specific personality which differs considerably from the remaining three. I ended up playing with Pete, the science nerd that is way too comfortable with making puns.

All labs have a distinct feel, the map is big but not enough to become a chore to navigate, and it is sprinkled all over with points of interest that are immediately recognizable. Crafting is fine and the progression system works wonderfully. You feel your character getting stronger as you progress, and the moments in which you unlock tool upgrades feel so rewarding. You’ll always keep in the back of your mind the resources that you had to leave behind because you needed the tier 2 or 3 tools, so when you finally get them and get showered with shiny new toys is fantastic.

Enemy variety is also excellent. Obsidian didn’t have to come up with opponents, they just used real life insects. But what they excelled in was the way they made each and every one of them feel unique. All these insects sound different, they have distinct “voices” and, with enough hours under your belt, you’ll even manage to identify them simply by how they walk/crawl. They also play differently. Wolf spiders have attack patterns that are harder to deal with than Orb Weavers. Mosquitos and bees are two completely different fights. Ants and larvae pose distinct challenges.

The infected versions of insects aren’t too exciting, but they work well in making fights more challenging without needing to learn an entirely new moveset, instead adding one or two infection-related attacks to the pre-existing kit. Tier 3 brings entirely new insects to spice things up further, which is great. There are also a few bossfights spread throughout the yard, and some of them are incredibly tough in the max difficulty.

I didn’t interact too much with base-building as it is not really my thing, and Dune: Awakening pampered me too much with quality of life settings. This is one of the things that I hope the sequel keeps improving on as it is one of the few parts of Grounded that feels archaic and oddly buggy (pun not intended).

Obsidian is a special studio, and Grounded proves how they always bring their own flavor, even in a genre that is absolutely dominated by staples that few dare to diverge from. If the survival genre is a Billy Hog, everyone is stuck with plain mustard while Obsidian’s Grounded comes through with the honey mustard special, and it is damn delicious.