Grounded

I came to the Grounded party waaaay later than I could have. Once again, my middle-aged lack of FOMO seems to have paid off. Grounded, published by major studio Obsidian rode a really good wave of being an "Early Release" title that got built alongside the community of players. It's been out since 2020, and recently released a sequel in much the same manner.

I had seen gameplay of Grounded early on and added it to my wishlist on Steam thinking "I'll pick this up eventually, it seems cool". It's an open-world, survival-adventure game that could best be summarized as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; the game. You play as one of 4 teenagers shrunken by an evil corporation, and awaken in a case in the middle of a backyard. The backyard happens to be at the home of Dr. Wendell Tully, whom created this technology and may be your only hope to regaining your full size. That is, of course, if you can survive the onslaught of enormous insects and other threats between the fences and the back porch of the Tully residence.

The game is honestly fantastic. I poured an embarrassing amount of hours into it in just a few weeks and managed to unlock every single Steam achievement and get 100% on the in-game report card. I progressed through to the 4th "New Game+" mode and was able to stop only once I was satisfied with the palace of a home base that built of mushroom bricks high in the oak tree at the center of the yard.

What I realize though, is that I got the kind of enjoyment out of this that I did because I waited for the polished product to be complete, and didn't have to struggle through the bumps of playing a partially complete game with a slow roll-out of features and content over the first 3 or so years. Personally, I find it to be a really bad practice to give the public the option of paying to be your beta tester without any guarantees of a successful final product. Even a final product at all is a bridge too far for the number of games that get abandoned and studios that get shut down.

All that being said, I'm really happy that in this case, an early release title turned out to be a masterpiece by the time that I got to it. It didn't hurt that I was able to grab it for half price, and that it runs amazingly well on my Steam Deck.