Steam Game Review] The world you once longed for as a child! Survival game "Grounded" that lets you explore in a micro world

In this series, Mina Tsujimura, aka SteamMania, a core gamer on Steam, reviews in detail the recommended games available on Steam, a PC game platform that is currently enjoying a lot of popularity. She will introduce the fun of the games.

This time, we will introduce "Grounded," a new survival game created by Obsidian Entertainment, a California-based developer famous for developing many popular games such as "Fallout: New Vegas" and "Armored Warfare. A free demo version was released in June this year. It also supports a multiplayer mode that you can play with your friends.

Even if you are not a fan of insects, it is okay!　The realism of the spider's appearance can be adjusted in 5 levels.

This is a survival game in which you control the main character to survive while solving various riddles. The game takes place in the backyard of a house, where the main character, a boy and a girl, suddenly become small one day. Who in the world did this and why did they become small? ...... And what is the reason?　As the game progresses, these mysteries will be revealed little by little.

For the protagonist, who has become small, the backyard is a vast jungle. Of course, it is also home to many dangerous predatory insects, and in Grounded, the graphics, cries, and gestures of these insects are very realistic.

Cute insects are welcome, but it's hard to make even grotesque insects realistic, isn't it? For such people, there is a setting to change the deformation of spiders in detail from Lv. 1 to Lv. 5.

Landmark is the "gardening shovel" Unique micro-world

In Grounded, every minute in the game is a second in reality, and day and night are neatly divided, with daytime from 6:00 to 20:00 and nighttime from 20:00 to 6:00. During the night, dangerous nocturnal insects become active and very dangerous. But don't worry!　You can skip the night by sleeping in a sleeping bag.

This backyard is divided into various biomes, including dead leaf areas and wetlands. In addition, each area is filled with micro-world landmarks, such as trash to mark the way, an old lost baseball, or your mother's gardening shovel.

There are several domed research sites on the map, which are marked on the map as they are discovered. At the research sites, you can find out how to use the resources and recipes you find.

Landmarks are "gardening shovels" Unique micro-world

Characters have stats such as thirst, hunger, stamina, and strength (HP), which are always displayed in the lower left corner of the screen.

The hunger and thirst gauges can be used even when one is empty, as long as the other remains. However, if both become empty, you will lose strength and die. Be sure to secure food, as there are many types of food and they are easy to find as they fall everywhere. Insect flesh rots quickly, so mushrooms that do not rot are useful in the early stages.

Drinking water, on the other hand, can be found on leaves and other surfaces, but there are not that many of them. It is very difficult to find it in the early stages. Therefore, it is ideal to build a base in a place where water is easy to obtain.

The recommended location is near the juice garbage. It is safe because juice respawns here stably.

Incidentally, there are puddles of water in the map, but they are sewage water and will upset your stomach. It will quench your thirst, but you will get hungry rapidly, so I don't recommend it.

I actually tried playing with it.

Let's try playing the game right away. First, select "New Game" and choose a character from among four men and four women. All of them have the same performance except for their appearance.

When the main character wakes up, he/she will notice that everything is bigger. At first, we will follow the tutorial and explore. While exploring, he finds a suspicious device!

I press the button and a laser beam comes out; one of the three lasers is interrupted by a leaf that is blocking it, so I move the leaf out of the way.

One laser light was blinking weakly, so I went to see where it was coming from and found that a mite had chewed up the power cord.

After clearing out the ticks, I go back to the device and turn it on, and a movie plays and a kind of pink energy is generated in a large autumn-leafed tree. I go to the autumn-leaf tree.

I go to the bottom of the autumn-leaf tree and find a small door!　Excitedly, I go inside and see a robot that looks like a boss. "What, a boss fight? I was a bit nervous for a moment, but I hit him about 10 times with the spear that is made at the beginning of the fight and he collapses. Oh, no!　What a conscientious boss.

I got myself together, solved the riddle, and opened the door to the room to find a fallen robot inside. When I helped the robot, some explanation began and the tutorial ended. This robot seems to be a guide, and I was told that from now on I can order quests and spend points to upgrade items.

Now that the tutorial is over, the next step is to build a base!　I chose a location near a tree with autumn leaves, where there were empty juice cans and juice cartons lying around.

I was busy collecting materials while learning recipes by analyzing the materials I picked up at the research base. It was fun just collecting materials, dashing through the jungle, plucking weeds, collecting acorns, and so on.

However, tragedy struck when I was collecting dandelion stems. ...... A large, poisonous spider appeared in front of me and killed me instantly. Suddenly it became a horror game. I retrieved my backpack and collected dandelion stems far away where there was no spider. I made a mental note to save manually the next time I found a spider web.

Here is the base we built in three full days of in-game time!　There are no walls yet, but the atmosphere is great.

But you have to be careful of the worker ants. If you put food in the chest, they will try to steal it. I'll have to build a proper wall soon. ......

I can't get enough of the excitement!　It was a sci-fi x fairy tale game.

I have always loved survival games, so I usually play a variety of survival games, but Grounded was one of the games that had excellent controls. Perhaps it is because the characters are children, but I was amazed that they could jump so high and easily get to places that at first glance seemed unclimbable.

By the way, what surprised me the most this time was that the ladybugs were surprisingly strong. They do not attack humans as long as we do not attack them, so when we are attacked by carnivorous insects, we run for shelter near the ladybugs. When the attack of the enemy carnivorous insect hits the ladybug, the ladybug gets angry and defeats the insect with great force. In fact, even against two spiders, it kills them instantly without any problem. The ladybug is a fearsome creature.

More insects, furniture, stories, and areas will be added to the game in future updates. The game is not yet available in Japanese, but as it is still in Early Access (under development), we can expect more in the future. Personally, I found this game to be the most interesting survival game released this year.

Title Information

Grounded" (Obsidian Entertainment)
Released on July 28, 2020
Price: 3,132 yen (as of November 6, 2020)
# of players

Author：Suchimu Mana (Mina Tsujimura)

Writer and gamer who belongs to Office Mica. Her favorite game genres include sandbox survival games and horror games. Her style of game playing is a text-chatting game player who is afraid of VC players.

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