Grounded Reviews

In a genre that's markedly saturated, Grounded stands tall. Dripping with charm, its unique setting and premise give it ample space to impress players who think they've seen it all.

Grounded is a fantastic survival game, a colourful, unique, and original slice of joyful adventuring that everyone should play if they have the opportunity. It nails the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids vibe, its core gameplay loops are moreish, and its setting and enemies are often breathtaking in how they reframe the mundane. However, and as usual for these big efforts on Switch, this port has plenty of issues. They've had to tank the visuals, the all-important online co-op is flaky, the frame rate is fine until you start going big on bases — just all the stuff we've come to expect at this stage, really. If you can handle the issues, or if Switch is your only way to play, this game can still deliver the goods and the quality shines through. However, if you have another way to play it, we'd definitely recommend you do that instead.

Grounded on the Nintendo Switch sacrifices a bit of visual fidelity for a really solid port of an incredibly quirky survival game.

Grounded is an unusual take on the survival/crafting genre, with a clever premise and a decent sense of style. Tedious gameplay drags the experience down, though.

It was around two years ago when I first played Grounded. By then, I was already tired of survival games, waking up to a new world, smashing trees and rocks, and then rubbing them together to create an axe. The axe then being used to break even more giant stones, which you could turn into a Gatling gun that fired bullets made out of the excrement of a nearby caterpillar. There was very little a sandbox survival game could do to keep things interesting, bar sending you to the bottom of the sea or sending you to space. There's also that one where you're a Viking.

Grounded has a bit too many compromises to recommend fully, but it is playable and can be quite enjoyable if this is your only way to play!

With its 1.0 release, Grounded has so much to discover, and enough of a hook to justify the dozens of hours you might invest. Whether you’re an exploration-minded player in search of landmarks and tucked-away treasures, or a castle-building fiend with a vision, you should ideally bring friends along for the ride. Still, playing alone, it was hard for me to walk away from Grounded, even in its slowest moments. I wasn’t satisfied with my end-of-game score, so I searched for secrets and kept going, boosting my grade in the process. Even now, there are still more bugs to catalog and, inevitably, squash. Nothing personal!

Grounded provides some great survival mechanics and challenging combat in a rather novel environment with an intriguing plotline. The game can be very tough but also very rewarding. However, it can take a while to really get the game going with the analysis mechanic and the lack of explanation revolving around many other ludemes.

Grounded provides a survival experience unlike any other within its genre. Carving out a place to survive within the tiny realm of the backyard is rewarding, and exploring the world from a new perspective is amusing. With the release of the full game, Grounded now feels like a complete experience worthy of its fans’ expectations.

Grounded is an incredibly rewarding survival experience that constantly pushes you into new areas of its reactive world, filled with insect inhabitants that are some of the best baddies in gaming.

Obsidian's survival romp is one of the best.

Of all the survival games I’ve played, Grounded is easily one of the coolest. The very theme of it is fun and the execution is pretty on target too. Playing as micro-sized kids in a vast yard full of pests and threats is really interesting, the story keeps exploration intriguing, and the progression, whether alone or with friends, feels satisfying. I’m not fond of how hard it is on normal difficulty alone, or the lack of variety among nearly required gear, but it really gets all the more delightful with friends helping. Even then, there’s plenty of ways to enjoy Grounded solo, too. Between Creative Modes, multiple difficulties, and a nice set of accessibility options, Grounded feels like one of the strongest entries to the survival genre in a long time.

Grounded's charming, Honey I Shrunk the Kids premise is elevated by its uniquely welcoming approach to wonder.

Grounded is a charming survival experience that mixes exploration, action, and crafting into one grand package. There are plenty of options for those wishing to get immersed in the world, and anyone willing to put up with the odd multiplayer requirements will surely get hours of enjoyment out of this game.

The small but vast world of Grounded provides players with an all-new experience where you are shrunken in size. In this game, everyday objects appear larger, and the once tiny bugs are now frightening creatures that will try to eat you.

Coming to us from a smaller team within Obsidian Entertainment, Grounded is a somewhat rare example of a survival game being developed by a non-indie studio. With 2 years of early access under its belt and a veteran developer at the helm, this game of shrunken humans and horrifying bugs has finally released in its 1.0 state.

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If you already have a Game Pass subscription, you should definitely give Grounded a whirl. Rest assured that it won’t disappoint you; at least not in the first few days of your playtime. But if you want to pay for it, I recommend waiting a bit more until the game receives more content.

Grounded plants the seeds of a good survival game in its miniaturist world, but it'll definitely take some time for them to grow.

Grounded has a lot going for it. It’s a really inventive setting, with some pitch-perfect opportunities for the team to deliver on “the Obsidian side” of its initial pitch in the future. Currently, however, it feels a bit sparse in terms of both available content and quality-of-life considerations. And while I really hope that Grounded grows and blossoms into the truly special adventure it could become, it’s still got a few yards to go.