Numerous survival-crafting video games get many updates over a few years, and although Obsidian’s Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Crafting-Recreation, Grounded, is one such recreation, I additionally did not count on a sequel to return out so quickly. Throughout Summer season Recreation Fest 2025, I used to be capable of play half-hour of Grounded 2, each from the opening minutes of the sport and with a save file that threw me into the center of the sport. Afterward, this subject was the primary I introduced up with the studio: Why could not the workforce proceed constructing on Grounded as a substitute of transferring on to a sequel?
“So there are a few completely different causes,” recreation director Chris Parker informed me in a roundtable chat. “We did proceed to construct on Grounded. So there have been 4 main updates after Grounded 1.0 launched, after which another help updates that got here out. However on one hand, there have been some limitations with expertise, as a result of Grounded was supported all the best way again on the Xbox One, and so our skill to form of develop on that platform was fairly restricted,” he defined, admitting that it possibly might’ve been solved if the workforce actually wanted it to, however transferring on from the Xbox One let the workforce pursue different new options, too.
“One of many large issues was that there have been some options, like specifically, buggies, [the game’s new vehicles in Grounded 2,] that we needed to resolve,” Parker mentioned. “So as to remedy these, we actually wanted to consider how they labored on this planet, and what that world house regarded like. They run sooner, they struggle in a different way, they do completely different gathering. We wish to make sure that all of these issues work collectively actually, rather well.
“And actually, our Grounded 1 workforce thought of doing buggies. They messed round with them for a short time, however they simply discovered that the world house did not actually work. They made this recreation the place we ran round. And so for us to essentially take this on and do that factor that we knew the neighborhood tremendous, tremendous liked and actually needed, we determined to go from the bottom up.”
Buggies are undoubtedly Grounded 2’s greatest function revealed primarily based on what we all know to this point. When the sport launches in Steam Early Entry and Xbox Recreation Preview, two buggies can be accessible to begin: the crimson ant and the orb weaver spider buggies, and every of them will include their very own talents. To acquire a buggy, you really need to steal an egg, then hatch it at your base, making a pleasant model of the usually hostile bug.
The crimson ant soldier buggy is extra like a “basic function buggy,” Parker defined. “It could possibly harvest and it could place blueprints, and it could construct, and it could struggle with you on it, or as a companion, form of alongside you. It could possibly haul stuff, it has its personal stock.” The orb weaver, in the meantime, has a extra particular use case. It is “far more for exploration and combating, as a result of it is actually, actually good at each of these, and it is sooner. It is simply superior to journey round on a spider, assuming they do not freak you out an excessive amount of, however we do have arachnophobia mode coming again once more,” referring to the oft-praised accessibility function.
Parker mentioned “simply all the pieces in Grounded 2 is by some means tied to suggestions from the neighborhood that we had gathered at one time or one other. We’ve got a huge database of issues that the neighborhood had requested for on Grounded 1, and after we began Grounded 2, loads of what we began with was, ‘What elements of this are issues that we wish to dive into and assault? And do we predict we are able to do [them] effectively and really serve the neighborhood by tackling these items?’ So just about all the pieces is concentrated on that,” he mentioned, revealing that buggies had been the “primary most-requested function,” and so the workforce is worked up to get that to gamers on day one.
Day one, on this case, means the early entry launch, which involves Xbox Collection X|S and PC, together with Recreation Move, on July 29.
