Role-playing · 2022 · Obsidian Entertainment · online
Grounded
Shrunk to the size of an ant in your own back garden: the sprinkler is now a natural disaster.
What it is about
You wake up as children shrunk to the size of an ant, somewhere in the grass of an entirely ordinary back garden. A blade of grass is a tree, a juice box is a building, and the sprinkler is a force of nature.
From that comes a survival game with the familiar routines — water, food, tools, base — except the building material is blades of grass, clover leaves and ant shells, and your first axe is a pebble tied to a stick. The map is small and densely built instead: there is something behind nearly every bush.
Unlike most of its kind, this game tells a real story, with laboratories underground, recorded messages and an ending. With two you share the base, the chests and the paths — and you can set the difficulty to suit you.
Our verdict for couples
Waking up ant-sized in your own back garden means above all that the lawn sprinkler is now a natural disaster. What sets it apart from other survival games sounds trivial and changes everything: it has closing credits. That makes it feel, for two, like a project that will one day be finished rather than a condition you quietly walk away from one evening. And if spiders frighten you, there is a slider to push beforehand until nothing is left but floating eggs — that is not a footnote but, for some couples, the reason they can start at all.
Pros
- A told story with a real ending
- A slider against arachnophobia
- Difficulty freely adjustable
Cons
- No local co-op
- Co-op requires a Microsoft account
- The nights in the garden are not for the faint-hearted
Suitable from
Hobby
- Conflict potential
- Harmonious
- Cosiness
- Mixed
- When you can stop
- Any time
- How long it lasts
- Over 40 hours
What other co-op fans say
The community praises one decision above all: a small, densely filled map instead of a large empty one. Strikingly often it is said that the game is better in co-op than alone, and that the story genuinely drives you on — for a survival game neither is a given. The settings for people with arachnophobia get named as well. The few objections circle the opening, which is hard at first, and the Microsoft account sign-in before you can play together.
- “It's an open world survival crafting game that understands that making a smaller map with dense content is far more interesting than a huge barren map.”
- “whoever added the option to turn spiders into a floating egg, i love you. as an arachnophobe this is the only reason i can play this game”
- “after a bit of a microsoft account setup”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
If you like this one
Runs on the same devices as this game.
Valheim
Make a Viking world habitable as a pair: fell trees, raise a hall, put out to sea.
Survive the next winter together. Nothing is explained, dying is frequent.
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North unreviewed
A Middle-earth role-playing game for three that finally gets a split screen on PC.
Terraria
Dig out a two-dimensional world, build it up, and clear its bosses one at a time.
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