Grounded
Obsidian Entertainment · RPG, Survival, Action
Overview
The world is a vast, beautiful and dangerous place – especially when you have been shrunk to the size of an ant. Explore, build and survive together in this first person, multiplayer, survival-adventure. Can you thrive alongside the hordes of giant insects, fighting to survive the perils of the backyard?
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,999 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players love Grounded for turning a suburban backyard into a dangerous open world they can explore together. The praise keeps returning to being ant-sized among towering grass and wolf spiders, building bases and zipline networks, crafting gear from the bugs you kill, and a story that gives the survival loop a direction. Co-op sits at the centre: 40% of the longer reviews talk about friends, co-op or multiplayer, and 17% mention playing with a partner, a child, a sibling or a parent. The tone is warm, and some reviews are openly nostalgic for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
The complaint found in the most negative reviews is that the co-op people buy it for does not always hold together: 14% of the negative reviews describe clients disconnecting every few minutes, joining errors or lag. A smaller group objects to needing a Microsoft or Xbox account to play online. Combat that leans heavily on the perfect block divides players, and a steady minority find the resource grind, gear durability and a slower final stretch wear them down, especially when playing alone. Bugs, lost saves and unclear objectives come up less often.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Co-op with friends, partners and familyHigh
Players describe couples' playthroughs, parents introducing kids to games, and friend groups screaming at the same spider; 40% of the longer reviews bring up friends, co-op or multiplayer, and 17% mention playing with a partner, child, sibling or parent. "Co-op is where the game really shines, and working together with friends makes the experience much more fun," one review says, and another calls it a "Fantastic way to introduce gaming universe to my 8 year old." Players credit the shared world system, shared science progress and crossplay with consoles for making it work across households and platforms. The co-op problems players report are technical ones, mainly dropped connections, covered under the frustrations below.
The shrunk-down backyard and exploring itHigh
Being shrunk is the premise players keep coming back to: 24% of the longer reviews talk about exploration and 19% about the concept, often naming Honey, I Shrunk the Kids directly. Players like that familiar objects become landmarks, that the yard keeps opening up ("It's just a backyard but it's MASSIVE to you!"), and that the hand-built map rewards poking into corners. One reviewer praises a game "that understands that making a smaller map with dense content is far more interesting than a huge barren map." Wolf spiders and orb weavers are written about with a kind of affectionate fear, the jump scares treated as part of the fun.
Base building and crafting from bug partsHigh
Treehouses, bases on the baseball, ziplines across the whole yard, decor that fills a "coziness" meter: building comes up in 34% of the longer reviews, and the comments are mostly enthusiastic. Crafting (19%) gets credit for tying progress to the creatures you hunt, so that, in one player's words, "progression comes purely from killing bigger bugs and using their pieces to make the next weapons". Several players single out quality-of-life touches such as depositing into nearby chests and crafting straight from storage, calling it "nearly every quality-of-life feature the genre needs". The building interface itself has detractors, who find placement fiddly and the material counts high.
A story that gives survival a directionHigh
The story is mentioned in 31% of the longer reviews, often as a reason the game stands out from directionless survival sandboxes. Players enjoy the labs, the BURG.L quest line, the audio logs and the banter between the four teens; one describes how "every time I get a VHS both me and my friend stay silent just to listen to the story". A smaller group finds it thin or predictable ("The story is pretty basic"), and the characters' jokes split people (see voice lines below), but few reviews call the story a reason not to play.
Bosses and creature varietyMedium
Players praise enemies that each fight differently, with weaknesses and resistances that shape your build, and labs that feel hand-designed. Bosses come up in 12% of the longer reviews, and the Infected Broodmother is named in several of them: some call it a favourite challenge, others a wall. Negative reviews raise late bosses that spawn minions or need several players, and one counts "3 of them are terrible to fight against."
Looks, sound and atmosphereMedium
The graphics, art style or atmosphere get praise in 17% of the longer reviews, which point to dew drops, sunsets, detailed insects and a 90s look. Sound design and voice acting also get compliments. A few reviewers dislike the cartoonish or "plastic" look.
Arachnophobia mode and difficulty slidersLow
The arachnophobia setting gets grateful mentions from players who could not otherwise play ("whoever added the option to turn spiders into a floating egg, i love you"). Custom difficulty sliders are praised for letting casual and hardcore players share a world, though a few note that changing them in custom games disables achievements.
New Game+ and replay valueLow
Players who finish the story often continue into New Game+, which they say brings new mechanics, weapons and twists along with tougher bugs ("surprisingly well done"). A smaller group finds higher NG+ levels badly balanced and the milk molar hunts repetitive.
Where players are split
Combat built around the perfect blockHigh
Combat is mentioned in 28% of the longer reviews, and players disagree about it. Fans enjoy learning each bug's attack timing and say that "once you know how to perfect parry, the Backyard is your domain", with some comparing it favourably to Souls games. Critics say the system leaves too little choice: "You are suppose to perfect perry every attack or get punished for it." Their recurring complaints are no dodge or dash, enemies that hit hard and heal when they drop aggro, slow stamina recovery, groups of enemies attacking at once, and hitboxes that miss. Some co-op players add that latency throws off parry timing for anyone who is not the host.
Solo play and difficultyMedium
Playing alone gets discussed in 15% of the longer reviews, and difficulty in 13%. Plenty of players finish alone and enjoy it; one calls it "the only game in said genre that I have beaten entirely solo". Others say the game assumes a group: "This game is AMAZING with other players, but if you're playing solo then it's not as fun." Solo complaints focus on late bosses and a final event that feel built for four, and on early hours where everything kills you. Supporters point to the difficulty settings and sliders as the answer.
Price and regional pricingLow
Price comes up in 9% of the longer reviews. Some say the hours of content justify it, while others say it is only worth buying on sale ("Would recommend if the price was half its current listing"). A few players in Turkey, Mexico and other markets say the regional price is too high.
PC performanceLow
Reports on performance, in about 5% of the longer reviews, disagree. Some say it runs smoothly, including on Steam Deck and older GPUs; others report low frame rates, stutter in busy late-game bases and crashes, and say the minimum specs are too low.
What frustrates players
Grind, durability and a slow final stretchMedium
Players describe gathering hundreds of grass planks, constant tool and armor repairs, hauling materials, and a lot of walking; 14% of the longer reviews mention grind, tedium or repetition. One negative review sums it up: "The biggest flaw in Grounded is that it does not respect your time at all." Some reviews that mention it call it mild, and a minority find the pacing ideal ("Never felt like a grind, felt like I was always making progress"). The complaint sharpens near the end: players who got far describe a last stretch of enemies with more health and less new to discover. "The final 25% of the game felt like a slog," one writes, and another says the first 70% is a masterpiece "But the last 30% is more bland and tedious."
Multiplayer disconnects and joining errorsMedium
No complaint appears in more negative reviews. 14% of them (103 of 713) describe connection problems: non-host players dropped every few minutes, desync, rubber-banding, "game no longer exists" and JoinPlatformSession errors, crashes when joining, and groups on the same network unable to stay connected. "If you aren't hosting the game you will be constantly disconnecting every 10-15 minutes," one player writes, and another says "Either you or your friend gets disconnected every five minutes, and you receive random errors every time you try to rejoin the session." Several say the problem has gone unfixed for years, and one complains that the effort went into Grounded 2 instead. One player cannot join a friend in another country, and a handful ask for dedicated servers or LAN play. Other players say co-op works fine for them.
Not knowing what to do nextMedium
Players say the game rarely hints where to find a resource, a key or the next lab, so they turn to wikis and YouTube; guidance comes up in 7% of the longer reviews. One reviewer says it "really suffers when it comes to giving people hints as to what to do," and others describe reaching the end of a dungeon to find a door that needs an item they had no warning about. Some fans enjoy figuring it out, but positive reviews also recommend keeping a wiki or video guide open.
Bugs, crashes and lost savesMedium
Technical problems come up in about 5% of the longer reviews, apart from the many puns about bugs. Players report enemies stuck in or attacking through rocks and walls, physics launches, pets vanishing (one mentions "losing your pet when using a zipline and having to reload a save to get them back"), achievements not unlocking and crashes on load. Reports about saves describe losing whole worlds or long stretches of progress: shared worlds rolling back, primary save conflicts and corrupted files ("our multiplayer save file got somehow corrupted. Game progress got reset.").
Microsoft and Xbox account sign-inLow
Players buying on Steam object to needing a Microsoft or Xbox account for online play and crossplay, and some describe sign-ins that failed and kept them out of multiplayer. One explains that "you still need to login with an MS account even if you are playing via Steam". A few of these reviews also describe the connection problems above.
Getting around: travel, parkour and movementLow
A smaller group dislikes the traversal: no fast travel, long runs back to base ("have to walk for 12 minutes across the map"), and platforming sections with no ledge grab that feel dated ("Lots of jump puzzles, circa 2008"). Ziplines are the fix fans recommend, but they unlock later.
Base raidsLow
Some players dislike the payback raids that send waves of bugs, mosquitoes especially, at your base: "You spend all this time making a beautiful base, only to be attacked by swarms of bugs." Several mention turning raids off, and an older complaint objects that doing so once disabled achievements.
PC settings and audio device bugsLow
A cluster of PC-specific complaints: the game grabs Bluetooth headsets in hands-free mode during multiplayer and "does not allow selecting input or output device", depth of field cannot be turned off, the hotbar ignores the scroll wheel, mouse sensitivity can be too low, and controller support has gaps. Each appears in only a few reviews.
Repetitive voice linesLow
Some players tire of the characters' one-liners, such as "I could devour a Billy Hog", and ask "why are we forced to listen to NPCs say the same phrase 1000 times an hour". Others love the same lines and quote them fondly.
3. The player conversation
Most of the conversation is affectionate, and the reviews skew short and warm ("10/10 Would get shrunk again"), with running jokes about the game being full of bugs, wolf spider jump scares and Pete. A recurring type of review comes from players who first played on Xbox, Game Pass, PlayStation or Switch and bought it again on Steam, and many write about who they played with: a spouse, a child, a sibling or a long-running friend group. Grounded 2 comes up in 15% of the longer reviews, mostly from players looking forward to it or moving on to it after finishing; the smaller group who compare the two disagree on which is better.
Two groups stand out among the negative reviews. One is players who bought the game for co-op and could not keep a session alive: nearly a third of the negative reviews about multiplayer problems come from players with under five hours logged, and a couple mention refunds. The other is players who played deep and grew tired of combat, grind or the late game; complaints about the final stretch come mostly from people with long playtimes. Lost saves are reported less often, and the reports describe shared worlds and long playthroughs that vanished. Week to week the slice shows no sustained shift, with the positive share mostly between 85% and 98%.
4. What the developers could do
- Fix client disconnects and desync in co-op. It is the complaint found in the most negative reviews, from players who say non-hosts drop every few minutes even on strong or shared networks.
- Offer a dedicated server or LAN option and allow cross-region play. Players who lost an old server, play on one home network, or have a friend in another country say peer hosting through Microsoft's services leaves them no way to play together.
- Make the Microsoft or Xbox account optional for Steam-only groups and fix sign-in loops. Steam players report being blocked from online play or crossplay by account prompts that never complete.
- Protect shared world saves with backups and clearer ownership. Reviews describe rollbacks, primary save conflicts and corrupted files that wiped long-running worlds.
- Lighten the grind and travel in the late game. Players ask for cheaper repairs and less durability loss, fewer materials per build, and faster ways to move between bases; one asks for field stations to work as fast-travel points.
- Give clearer hints on objectives and requirements. Reviewers want to know where resources and labs are, and to be warned before a main-path door demands an item they lack.
- Add more combat options beyond the perfect block. Critics of the combat ask for a dodge or dash, more forgiving timing for non-host players under latency, and enemies that do not fully heal when they drop aggro.
- Add basic PC options. Players ask for audio input and output selection to stop the Bluetooth headset bug, a depth of field toggle, scroll-wheel hotbar control and better controller support.
