Grounded 2 Hands-On Preview: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids 2

When Grounded was released in 2020 through Xbox’s Early Access program, it was the beginning of the pandemic; we saw a drastic increase in player retention and interest in specific video games, and one of them was cooperative survival games. It boasted something you could play with your friends all while offering a bit of a challenge.

Throw in a bit of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids charm and Obsidian had a recipe for success. While they implemented and improved over the next few years, the developers worked with Eidos Montreal to create a sequel that would follow the game’s framework, both in design and distribution.

A Familiar Battleground

We may be small again, but the world is bigger than ever before.

Grounded 2 feels incredibly similar to its predecessor, but with various quality-of-life improvements that help it stand out. The world that Obsidian has crafted feels significantly larger than what was in your backyard. While we huddled next to the massive tree, or explored the colossal pond, all while avoiding the dangerous koi fish, this time we took to the park where there’s a little more variety. We found ourselves climbing frigid mounds of ice cream from a downed kart, something that was frighteningly filled with scorpions, to scaling a picnic table that had rightfully been overrun by spiders and anything hungry.

With that said, there are surprising limitations and boundaries to the world, with corners of the park that feel like a tease that we can’t go there yet. With that said, this is an Early Access game, so the content is not complete. There’s also the aspect of feeling too similar to the original, especially with many of the same old mechanics of how to handle your food and water. Still, it’s more of a situation of don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Building Upward

The base building returns in a big way.

Base building remains a key component to Grounded, as wherever you set up shop, there’s always a chance that a big creature will come across it. The initial home base is generally always safe, but it lacks some of the resources and conveniences other locations give, especially later on, but it’s a generally safe place to set up shop.

With that said, there are means of defending your base, be it with the standard defenses such as spike strips and fortifications, while there are other things you can build, such as acorn turrets. There’s a wide variety of crafting functions, not only for the base, but creating new gear and weaponry, alongside means of keeping yourself fed and well hydrated.

There’s a lot of what we’ve come to remember in Grounded in terms of equipment and weaponry, but with the added creatures you’re able to find, such as scorpions and caterpillars, the catalog has grown considerably. All of this comes down to the key component to Grounded and Grounded 2: harvesting. The whole point of Grounded is extracting materials from the environment and bugs, and it’s made easier with the Omin-Tool, something that acts as a hammer, axe, shovel and repair tool. This can be upgraded at an Ominent base by interacting with a Ranger station.

While you’ll still be scanning the various items you pick up around the world to figure out new and creative ways to use them, the Ranger Station acts as a means of obtaining more crafting recipes through the Science Shop, along with upgrading your Omni-Tool with various materials.

Mount Up

The addition of mounting makes exploration so much more enjoyable.

Mounting was something a lot of players really wanted with the first game, but finally we’re getting it in the sequel. From the early stages of the story, you’ll be tasked with searching for a specific mysterious individual, one elusive to the big bad corporation. Slowly tracking her down through an ant farm, you’ll reveal that she was trying to find a way to make ants rideable. All that needs to be done, though, is find a specific soldier ant egg in her research and bring it back to your home base.

Of course, it’s never that simple as you’ll need to create specific environments to ensure the egg will flourish into a proper creature, but once it does, it opens up so many more possibilities. Having a mount that not only speeds up traversal, but also allows you to face down stronger enemies makes the overall Grounded 2 experience so much more enjoyable. That’s on top of it having its own pack for you to store items in.

You can also chop down grass, gather items and just carry larger items on its back while escaping the dangerous wildlife. All while the ant itself, unlike you, can regenerate its health over time, provided it doesn’t die in combat. Even then, all you need to do is get to your trusty companion and resurrect them in time, otherwise you’ll have to find another.

You can be enamored with the vast new world to explore in such a miniature form, but we implore you to immediately follow the first bit of the story to ensure you get to the point where you can mount an ant. It will make everything infinitely more enjoyable for exploratory and combat-related adventures. That’s on top of playing cooperatively, as it allows for so much more flexibility and fun to be had.

Having a mount that not only speeds up traversal, but also allows you to face down stronger enemies makes the overall Grounded 2 experience so much more enjoyable.

Having spent roughly two weeks with Grounded 2, we were left addicted and continue to try new things and approaches to the vast world. While it feels familiar, Grounded 2 contains massive quality-of-life improvements, along with a slew of new wildlife to interact with. That’s on top of the park being a brand-new exciting setting.

You can still play this solo, with an intriguing story and mystery to unravel, but this is best explored cooperatively with up to four players. In the end, even though it’s still in Early Access, Grounded 2 feels far more feature and content complete than a lot of full releases these days. There’s still so much of Grounded 2 that we feel like we have just barely scratched the surface of what we can do.