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Plenty of survival-crafting video games get many updates over a few years, and although Obsidian’s Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Crafting-Sport, Grounded, is one such recreation, I additionally did not count on a sequel to come back out so quickly. Throughout Summer time Sport 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 matter was the primary I introduced up with the studio: Why could not the group proceed constructing on Grounded as an alternative of shifting on to a sequel?
“So there are a few totally different causes,” recreation director Chris Parker advised 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 know-how, as a result of Grounded was supported all the way in which again on the Xbox One, and so our capacity to type of develop on that platform was fairly restricted,” he defined, admitting that it possibly may’ve been solved if the group actually wanted it to, however shifting on from the Xbox One let the group pursue different new options, too.
“One of many huge issues was that there have been some options, like specifically, buggies, [the game’s new vehicles in Grounded 2,] that we wished to resolve,” Parker stated. “As a way to clear up these, we actually wanted to consider how they labored on this planet, and what that world house appeared like. They run quicker, they combat in another way, they do totally different gathering. We wish to be certain all of these issues work collectively actually, rather well.
“And in reality, our Grounded 1 group thought of doing buggies. They messed round with them for a short while, however they only 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 beloved and actually wished, we determined to go from the bottom up.”
Buggies are undoubtedly Grounded 2’s greatest characteristic revealed primarily based on what we all know to this point. When the sport launches in Steam Early Entry and Xbox Sport Preview, two buggies might be obtainable to start out: the purple ant and the orb weaver spider buggies, and every of them will include their very own talents. To acquire a buggy, you truly must steal an egg, then hatch it at your base, making a pleasant model of the usually hostile bug.
The purple ant soldier buggy is extra like a “common objective buggy,” Parker defined. “It will possibly harvest and it may well place blueprints, and it may well construct, and it may well combat with you on it, or as a companion, type of alongside you. It will possibly haul stuff, it has its personal stock.” The orb weaver, in the meantime, has a extra particular use case. It is “rather more for exploration and preventing, as a result of it is actually, actually good at each of these, and it is quicker. 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 characteristic.
Parker stated “simply all the pieces in Grounded 2 is in some way tied to suggestions from the neighborhood that we had gathered at one time or one other. We now have a big database of issues that the neighborhood had requested for on Grounded 1, and after we began Grounded 2, numerous what we began with was, ‘What components of this are issues that we wish to dive into and assault? And do we expect we will do [them] effectively and truly serve the neighborhood by tackling these items?’ So just about all the pieces is targeted on that,” he stated, revealing that buggies had been the “primary most-requested characteristic,” and so the group is happy to get that to gamers on day one.
Day one, on this case, means the early entry launch, which involves Xbox Sequence X|S and PC, together with Sport Go, on July 29.