Developer Obsidian Entertainment recently announced that its backyard survival game Grounded would be getting less frequent, but larger updates moving forward. The first of these updates is coming in June and the Grounded team has already announced some of what it will be bringing to the game. The update will likely be subject to scrutiny from the community as players will be looking towards the update to see whether or not the development team's move to less frequent updates will truly be worth it.
For anyone who doesn't know, Grounded is a co-operative survival game that puts players in the shoes of kids shrunken down to the size of a bug in their backyard straight out of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. To survive players have to build structures out of plants and twigs gathered from their surroundings while also battling now Grounded's iconic giant bugs and spiders as they search for a way to return to normal size. Grounded launched in early access last year, and is quickly approaching one year of receiving sizable updates that have continued to expand the game.
New Building Changes Coming to Grounded
Grounded's June update will bring with it some new building options for players to customize their bases with. The most far-reaching of these is the ability for players to flip building pieces. The update will allow players to place building pieces that are mirrored from how they usually appear in Grounded. The change will allow players to make pieces fit in situations where they normally wouldn't, such as rotating a spiral staircase so that it better fits in a corner of one's base. The mirroring will also let players create more symmetric buildings while also being able to work with pieces that they previously couldn't.
The update will also bring some new building pieces for players to customize their homes with. The Grounded community has been calling for more building pieces for awhile now, with a particularly large subset of the community driving for more curved walls to be added to the survival game. Luckily for them, it seems that the wishes of Grounded's community have been heard again. Grounded's June update will add not only more curved walls but also different roof variations and pillars. While the new building pieces may not bring a lot of new utility to bases in Grounded, they should help players customize their bases more and create some great new builds.
Changes to Giant Food Coming to Grounded
Of course, Grounded also tasks players with finding food and water to keep themselves alive and satiated as part of their survival. To do so, players can hunt bugs, grow food, cook recipes, or find giant remains from food that have been dropped in the backyard. The giant food is one of the most charming parts of Grounded's world, and in June players can expect to run into them more frequently as the June update will increase the spawn rate of Grounded's giant food such as Billy Hogs, apples, hot dogs, and Archers Cookies. The increased spawn rate will likely help many of Grounded's more than five million players, as finding giant food spawns is very important to survival in the backyard.
The June update will also make it a bit easier for players to find giant food sources thanks to the game's trusty ant population. When the update drops, ants will harvest food from giant food sources throughout the day. Players will be able to follow any ants that they find gathering food back to the giant food source, which will reward players with a higher quality food item for their trouble. The added feature does keep inline with Grounded's previously released roadmap that lays out Obsidian Entertainment's hopeful additions to the game, and should help players better find giant food while introducing an interesting new interaction with ants as well.
All the Other Changes Coming to Grounded
The June update will also bring a few other smaller additions to Grounded. Grounded added Photo Mode in an update in March, and the June Update will expand on it slightly with some new features to help players get the perfect photo. Obsidian Entertainment has not detailed all of the additions, but it has revealed that players will be able to adjust the time of day. As the photo mode is now, players can already apply filters, position the camera, pose their characters, and all while playing in multiplayer lobbies. Obsidian Entertainment's official blog post discussing the update also mentions that it will address a variety of bugs that players have reported as well as adding some smaller quality of life improvements, like allowing players to sprint while on a ladder.
The last revealed addition coming with the new June update is Grounded's newest enemy type. It is a new TAYZ.T variant known as the ARC.R. TAYZ.T is a small robot that protects the hidden lab locations that are scattered across the backyard. They are formidable enemies, and can kill underprepared players with just a single hit. The new ARC.R variant looks like it'll be an even more lethal than the base TAYZ.T with a formidable new ranged attack. As its name suggests, the ARC.R is all about electricity. It is equipped with a capacitor stack and a massive arm cannon that can launch energized balls of charged static while it is defending its lab.
Of course, there is a lot of other new content coming in the June update as well that Obsidian Entertainment hasn't revealed yet. With the increased development time for this update, there will surely be some more features coming. Grounded has had large updates in the past, like the update that added the entirely new Koi Pond biome, so it will be very interesting to see what else the June update will bring to Grounded. With Grounded's continued support and the upcoming Avowed and Outer Worlds 2, it seems that Obsidian Entertainment is giving its fans a lot to look forward to in the future.
Grounded is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.