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Grounded's upcoming update lets you build custom experiences in the backyard using in-game tools.
Obsidian's Honey I Shrunk The Kids remix has spent the last year refining the core bug-squashing, base-building loop. But now the team is ready to hand things off to the community in the Make It And Break It update coming on November 13.
The upcoming update brings something called the Playgrounds mode, which sounds similar to other custom-level editors like Halo's Forge. Essentially, you can place an unlimited number of buildings, obstacles, critters, and more around the pre-existing backyard or an entirely empty sandbox. The team has supposedly already built a functioning wave-based Coliseum and a sound-based puzzle using the tools on offer - just to give us a taste of what's possible.
"This feature has been on the backlog for a very long time," says game director Adam Brennecke in an interview with Xbox Wire. "Giving people the opportunity to extend the lifetime of the games they enjoy is always really cool, which was very important to us. We've always wanted to see what the community can make with these tools."
Brennecke also says that the modding community was incredibly influential to the Playgrounds mode: "That's the power of mods, you never know what's going to happen. We're going to provide the tools, and someone's going to make something magical that others might get attached to, and we have no idea what that might be."
Adding such a mode has been a big boon for fellow Xbox exclusive Halo Infinite, which recently saw an influx of MOBA modes, Pokemon arena simulations, and Kaijua versus Spartan events. I'm more than excited to see similarly wacky creations crop up in Obsidian's garden, too. All-out bee warfare? Horror mazes stuffed with spiders? We'll see what the community dreams up on November 13.
Despite the inevitable zaniness to come, Grounded is still a purely terrifying experience.
