It's been just under 11 months since Obsidian launched inch-high garden survival adventure Grounded into early access for Xbox and PC, and as its one-year anniversary approaches, the team is readying Hot and Hazy, its "largest update yet", for a 20th October release.

Since Grounded's stellar launch last year - it attracted a million players within two days and 5 million within four months - the team, still relatively small at only 20 people, has continued to expand on its appealingly diminutive premise.

Grounded's sandbox tale of 80s kids shrunk to the size of ants and forced to brave the perils of their now jungle-like backyard - exploring, battling bugs, and scavenging resources to fashion handy items along the way - has received a host of new additions since launch, including flying and aquatic bugs, a majestic koi pond, boss fights, new building items, pets, and more.

Read more

Grounded, the game about being very small and trapped in your own back yard, is getting a new update. The Shroom & Doom update was announced at this year's Microsoft and Bethesda E3 showcase, and looks really pretty wonderful.

WARNING: BIG SPIDER IN THE TRAILER BELOW.

The update allows for sitting (apparently this was heavily requested), pets and a new giant spider called the Brood Mother. Not fun.

Read more

We're a little over two weeks away from this year's attempt at an online-only E3, meaning everyone'll soon be sinking into the familiar swamp of showcase schedules and diary dates required to keep track of the event and everything around it. Wisely starting early to avoid the ensuing scramble, though, Microsoft has announced a 13th June air date for this year's E3-adjacent Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase.

It'll be a significant event for a number of reasons, not least because it's the first joint announcement show for the two companies following Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda last year, and things kick off at 10am PT on Sunday, 13th June - which, for us UK folk, equates to an entirely tolerable 6pm in the evening. It's a long one too, with Microsoft promising 90-minutes of announcements - hopefully that's a taut 90 minutes with none of the waffly filler it usually loves to pad out its livestreams with (hello Inside Xbox, I'm looking at you).

As you'd expect, there's little in the way of specifics regarding the games we'll be seeing - all the better to retain that all-important element of surprise - and Microsoft is merely teasing a look at the "epic gaming lineup coming out of [the Bethesda] partnership, the incredible games coming to Xbox this holiday, upcoming releases on Xbox Game Pass, and more."

Read more

Obsidian's Honey I Shrunk The Kids-style survival game Grounded has clocked up over a million players in just two days.

Announcing the achievement on Twitter, developer Obsidian also took time to celebrate the milestone with the news that, starting from 27th August, 2020, monthly updates will be deployed for the pint-sized playground.

"Grounded has reached 1 MILLION players in the first 48 hours! Thank you everyone! YOU are the reason we are having as much [fun] as we are, and without you we wouldn't be here! To show his thanks, Grounded's Game Director, Adam Brennecke, has a special message."

Read more

Please be warned that there are images of spiders in this article.

My dad had a spider in his shower for months and he named it Boris, and when one day the spider was no longer there, he seemed genuinely upset. It seems they'd formed quite a bond. I must have inherited his befriend-a-spider gene because I rather like them, like having them around the house. They're my household security against other pests. When I see occupied corners and windowsills I consider the room well fortified because nothing stands a chance against them. They're beautifully efficient, wonderfully evolved.

But not everyone likes them, you might be surprised to hear. When I try to tell my girlfriend it's good to have them around she doesn't seem to understand. "Can you get rid of it? Don't pick it up!" She doesn't even care if it's a house spider and it's supposed to live here! She wants it evicted, how heartless. Mind you, one did crawl across the duvet onto her neck so I suppose that's a contributing factor.

Read more

Microsoft is having a good time on Steam right now, with a number of its game in the top-sellers list.

Obsidian's Grounded is in fact the top-selling game on Steam's platform - at the time of this article's publication. Perhaps that isn't surprising given the game has seen over one million players in the first 48 hours of release.

The second top-selling game on Steam is another Microsoft game - this one not yet out. Microsoft Flight Simulator, which Martin is currently into in a very big way, is currently flying high on Steam.

Read more

Everything old is new again. That's Grounded, based on the short demo I just played as part of Steam's Summer Games Festival. A bit of exploration, a bit of crafting, some clumsy first-person combat. A world of interesting things to investigate that gradually expands in every direction. This is hardly new. But that world! Huge blades of grass rising overhead. Pausing beneath a canopy of clover. A building on the horizon, a sheer white wall, and when you approach it's a thing of Tic-Tacs dropped in the earth. The sell for Grounded is so simple: it's Honey I Shrunk the Kids, a bunch of you in the backyard suddenly no bigger than ants. But that simple sell is also completely transformative. The world of Grounded is magical.

I start the demo underground, soft earth leading off in several directions. I wander for a bit, picking up stems of smaller plants and eventually find a small geodesic dome - a place where I can analyse the things I find. My job is just to explore for now, explore and gather things and work out what's nearby. I see ants, and a ladybug that I absolutely refuse to mess with. I round a corner and golden sunlight lances through the grass - grass which is so thick I'm going to need a tool to cut through it.

The main bulk of the demo as I played it appears to be a gadget on the lawn that I'm trying to get reactivated. It has computer chips and a mother board inside - a terrain that I can literally walk around on top of - and three lasers that connect to it to power it up. Some of the lasers are blocked, and unblocking them is the obvious mission.

Read more

A demo for Grounded, Obsidian's Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Kids-style bug-high survival adventure, launches today.

The demo is available to those registered to be an Xbox Insider, but it's also on Steam as part of the Steam Game Festival, which launches today.

The demo is a 30-minute, single-player experience playable until 22nd June. Grounded will then enter Xbox Game Preview with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Steam Early Access on 28th July 2020.

Read more