3/5 ★ – FerrumCrow's review of Grounded.

Played from – to: (2023-04-29 – 2023-05-17) – PC keyboard. ‣ 6/10 – These people need to clean up their backyard sheesh. ‣ Thoughts: Grounded is definitely one of the more unique survival games in its genre, however, I found it to be a 50/50 experience. The whole idea of being shrunken down in your backyard brings an interesting twist to the world you must survive in. The setting is complex and allows for unique gameplay mechanics and survival aspects. The backyard itself is a very colorful and varied location, where every biome is created by litter or other discarded items. Gathering random leaves to build outposts that would probably get blown away with the smallest of drafts is cool and brings a cute twist to an already overdone base-building mechanic in survival games. However Grounded is a very long and grindy game. It does not hold your hand and you as a player must figure things out - where to go and how to approach each location. There’s a big variety of weapons and gear you can craft for each location you plan to visit. Sadly, the way upgrading gear and gathering resources for new equipment works is bizarre. Either I was completely clueless about how to play the game, or it is genuinely done terribly. Best example I can give to explain what I mean is this: In Minecraft if you want to get diamond tools you get diamonds with iron and you keep leveling up your gear. In Grounded it feels like you already need to have diamonds to make diamond gear without having iron which just feels backward. For example, to successfully battle against stink bugs, you must have a gas mask, but to even get one you already need stink bug parts, which makes your first encounters really challenging and in terms rewarding, however, I found that annoying and a waste of time. Overall, I found Grounded an interesting experience but its constant roadblocks just for the sake of grind made me quit the game. The story was hard to follow as most of it is told through audio logs and random notes. There are barely any npcs and I found the characters annoying and obnoxious. If you are in the market for a fresh and interesting survival game, then Grounded is the one for you. Just be ready to pour a few months into this and do a lot of repetitive bland combat.