$39.99Is Grounded worth it?
Grounded is worth it if…
- you want a survival crafting game with a real story running through it
- you like building bases with friends and defending them when the bugs come knocking
- you enjoy a world that turns the familiar into the strange, one garden at a time
- you want a game with plenty of hours in it, including new game plus runs
- you would rather parry a spider than outrun one
Screenshots
A whole world under the grass
The backyard is your open world, and being ant-sized turns ordinary corners into expeditions. A pond becomes a deep dive, a sandpit is a sweltering desert, a termite mound hides whole caverns. You start with nothing, gather grass, weed stems, sap and whatever else you can carry, and work up to proper tools, weapons and armor. Base building is part of the loop: pick a spot, raise walls and floors from blades of grass, and expand as you unlock better materials. The yard looks bright and colorful rather than grim, which makes it stranger when something with too many legs comes over the horizon.
Built for playing together
You can take on the yard alone, but the game is at its best with up to three friends online. Someone farms dew, someone hauls grass, someone insists the spider is definitely dead and is very wrong. Building a base together gives the group a shared project, and the story gives you a reason to push into dangerous territory as a team. The Shared Worlds feature lets you keep playing in your shared world even when the original host is offline, with all progression saved, so the base keeps growing whether everyone shows up or not.
A mystery with a story to follow
How did you get so small? Who did it, and how do you get home? The story answers those questions as you play, and it gives the sandbox a spine: labs to find, clues to piece together, a reason to push deeper than comfort allows. You choose how much to engage. Follow the plot when you want direction, or ignore it for hours and just sprawl across the lawn discovering things. The yard rewards curiosity, with hidden areas and secrets tucked into places you would otherwise walk past, and the mystery keeps pulling you back to the question of what actually happened here.
Make the character yours
Combat is melee-heavy and rewards timing: blocking and well-timed parries matter more than swinging wildly, and enemies telegraph their attacks clearly. Around that sits a proper character system. Mutations and Milk Molars let you pick the bonuses and perks you want, and you can swap mutations whenever you like, so a build is never locked in. Craft and upgrade armor and weapons to get the stats you need, whether that means tanking hits with a shield, shooting from range with a bow, or something in between. Difficulty settings range from gentle to the punishing Whoa mode, so you can tune the pressure.
