After playing Grounded 2 for 30 minutes, it's clear that my favorite survival game is getting a massive glow-up

Honey, Obsidian shrunk the kids… again. Of all the announcements at the Xbox Games Showcase, it was Grounded 2 that caught me off-guard. Obsidian Entertainment has partnered with Eidos Montreal to present a lushly produced sequel, a shift to Unreal Engine 5 and current-gen platforms allowing for big advancements across Xbox's smallest adventure. The open world is far larger, combat has been overhauled, so too have the core crafting and survival systems. If Grounded was a curiosity in the survival genre, then its sequel is shaping up to be a celebration of Xbox Game Studios' enduring creativity.

In an era where first-party studios are still grappling with how best to support live-service ventures, it's surprising to see Grounded 2 emerge so soon. Its predecessor burrowed out of early access in 2022, and led Microsoft Gaming's multiplatform initiative when it leaped onto PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch last spring. Obsidian tells me that over 25 million players have sought to survive the backyard. With this momentum established, why start over?

Big Ambitions

"One argument for Grounded 2 was that the original worked on Xbox One. It would have been very hard to continue working on that platform – to continue expanding the world and do everything that we wanted to do," says Chris Parker, game director of Grounded 2. "These sorts of technical limitations are solvable, so long as you're willing to deal with whatever the ramifications are."

Obsidian was not willing to accept creative limitations as it considered Grounded's evolution. The widening playspace is a fantastic example of this. Brookhollow Park is now large enough to accommodate mounts (known in-game as Buggies), which Parker says the original backyard was too small to support – despite being a heavily requested feature from the community. "The Grounded team did experiment with mounts back in the day," he says, "but they quickly realized that it just wasn't something that was going to work well with the game that they had designed."

Mounts help you build, battle, and survive in ways you couldn't do in Grounded, and from what I've experienced of them so far I don't think folks are going to be disappointed. Leaping onto a Red Ant Buggy, skittering around the undergrowth at speed, is just really fun. There's a purity to it that ignites the imagination. It's a reminder that even seemingly small additions can have a really transformative effect on the way we interact with virtual worlds. Buggies bring a new dimension to both combat encounters and resource collection, which is vital in a park that's packed with dangerous new critters.

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"Creatures are the lifeblood of Grounded," says Marcus Morgan, executive producer of Grounded 2. "It's so important every time we put a new creature into the mix, and we've gotten making them down to a bit of a science. There's a new scorpion, a blue butterfly, a caterpillar, and a snail," he says, chuckling – a reminder of the simplicity behind the core premise. "And we have reworked and retouched every creature that existed in Grounded that is being reincorporated back into the sequel."

It's clear that every returning aspect has been reassessed for Grounded 2. The Omni-Tool combines your axe, hammer, shovel, and wrench into an all-purpose tool that's more intuitive to wield; it also saves precious backpack space, reflecting an overall effort to refine inventory management and streamline the survival experience. Work has gone into refining the first and third-person camera perspectives. Co-op remains locked to four-players but steps have been taken to further integrate narrative elements, the original crew returning two years wiser than in their last adventure. Combat has been given a bit of a glow up too, with Grounded 2 introducing a new dodging mechanic that helps to battle bugs that are undoubtedly more tenacious.

Grounded 2 is clearly larger than what came before, but it's smarter and sharper too – a suite of quality-of-life improvements underpin an effort to establish more robust foundations. "There were things we wanted to do the first time around that we couldn't accomplish, just because of the way we designed the world," says Parker. "Grounded 2 is an opportunity for us to rebuild from the ground-up, give the game some longevity, so that we can continue to add in new elements and support the game – not just through early access, but beyond it."

Grounded 2 lands in Game Preview/Early Access for PC, Xbox Series X, and Game Pass on July 29, 2025.