Grounded 2 review: "I'm already having terrific fun thanks to ant buggies and a massive new park to explore, even if this sequel is slightly safe"

Grounded 2 is a terrifying survival horror game, cruelly disguised as a fun riff on a classic children's movie. I haven't watched Honey I Shrunk the Kids since I was a nineties kid. But I doubt there's anything as disturbing in it as the bit in Grounded 2 where a freshly decapitated giant cockroach continued vomiting hot goo over me from its neck stump. Did some developers get lost on the way to the Resident Evil 9 offices?

For the uninitiated, Grounded was a survival game where an unfortunate teen was shrunk to a few centimetres tall and then left to fend for themselves in someone's garden. It was tough, rewarding, beautifully made, and probably my favorite survival game since Subnautica (hey, someone should make a sequel to that ga– oh, right). Grounded 2 begins with Ominent, the company to blame for shrinking you last time, holding an event at the local park. But after a mysterious explosion, you find yourself shrunk again. Have these teens considered that it might be time to stop leaving the house?

To survive in this park you'll have to collect useless-seeming resources like clover leaves and pebbles, analyze them in one of Ominent's research stations, then use the critical info they give you to forge helpful tools. Chop down blades of grass to make walls and doors for a house that looks like it couldn't survive a gentle breeze. Slurp up dew drops and roast up some bugs for nourishment. Craft weapons from trash and insect parts so you can confront the massive spiders and then instantly change your mind and run away screaming.

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Mini Adventures

Grounded's hook of shrinking you down so a mundane park feels like an overwhelming land of adventure is a great one. Anthills become ominous entrances to vast twisting underground labyrinths. A spilled ice box is now a frozen dungeon where your temperature plummets if you haven't sewn yourself a toasty bee fuzz ensemble. Poor big-nosed weevil bugs have to be slaughtered, studied, and then crafted into makeshift gas masks, just so you can survive an epic journey through a nearby bin.

I love having a whole new park to explore, even if a lot of it is surrounded by yellow tape stating that it's 'under construction' (a cute way of showing the game's still in early access). During the opening hours you have no idea where the deadliest creatures like to call home, making every step you take into the unknown wonderfully tense. The Pixar-esque art style means it's almost always a pleasant place to cautiously wander. Sunrises are particularly nice, as well they should be, to apologize for all the horrible beasts that attacked you at night.

Buggy Game

Fleeing from eight-legged freaks will only work for so long. Luckily, when you do enter fights, combat satisfies, even if it does mean seeing some really sinister insects up close (remind me to play Grounded 3 in third person). It's based around blocking and dodging, and perfectly-timed blocks are rewarded with no damage taken. Together with a generous timing window, it makes for a fun, fair combat system which rewards paying attention to enemy animations.

The first time you successfully block every blow from something six times your size feels amazing. And finally crafting a powerful weapon that can turn the tables feels like nine christmases at once. Weapons have a good sense of impact and there's more variety this time to forge a fighting style that suits you. My mage staff that shoots blobs of spicy death, which I made out of some old candy someone dropped on the floor, is so joyous to use that I'm considering proposing. Quite the sweet tooth.

Then, after a long day of violently bashing mind-controlled ladybugs with hammers, I like to stick on a podcast and unwind with a peaceful evening building up my base. Get the essentials out of the way like your dew collector and cooking station. Then you can either focus on building an impenetrable battle fortress (watch your feet on the dozen spike traps I've built outside as a welcome mat) or make a fun little playground of cobweb trampolines for your friends.

Why not both? Grounded 2 makes living off the land great fun, especially because building anything close to a safe haven in this deadly place feels like a victory in itself. The park is magnificently alive, the food chain aggressively on show just outside your weed-based windows. Poor little aphids flee from hungry bigger insects, and both in turn are cooked into snacks by you. Few games build a thriving ecosystem in such a fun playground so convincingly.

But that was also true of the first Grounded. What's new for this sequel? Well, the park boasts more creatures, like butterflies that can attack you by creating chilling winds with their wing flaps, and snails who dart back into their seemingly invincible shells if you try to hurt them. There's plenty of new crafting recipes and the UI's been tidied up a bit. Fighting's far better. I'd struggle to go back to Grounded's sluggish bouts and say goodbye to that crucial dodge button.

Gr-ant Turismo

These are all nice additions, but it wasn't until I took my new pet ant for a drive that I finally felt like I was playing a true sequel. This rideable mount, called a 'Buggy', naturally, is excellent. My ant is fast, can hold its own in combat, and even has regenerating health. It has its own inventory and can carry loads of the more fiddly items (looking at you grass blades) which makes it helpful for base-building, too. There's still enough restrictions to stop it being game-breaking. You can't use any of your weapons while riding, for example. But buggies successfully streamline and speed up some of Grounded's more tiresome tasks. And yes, you can pet the ant. It's to Obsidian's immense credit that they've made me want to pet a creature so grim on the eye.

After you unlock the ant buggy, the game celebrates with a really nasty, poisonous difficulty spike – one attached to the end of a frikkin' scorpion. While not as terrifying as the wolf spiders from the original, they're still an immense threat that suddenly grinds your progress to a halt. Their attack damage is almost as massive as their health bar, and that's even before they start stabbing you with that venom-filled tail. And one's in the way of a crucial item you need to proceed in the story.

The solution? You figure it out. Grounded 2 gives you the tools you need but refuses to hold your hand. Take the floppy discs. These contain crucial crafting recipes and their exact locations are dotted on the map, just like in too many open-world games that can't keep a secret. But simply wander to that icon location and you won't see them anywhere, because that map icon was just the first clue. You have to use your (gasp!) brain, search out nearby underground routes, investigate paths up dangerously high trees and into horrible insect dens. Infuriating, yes, but you'll instantly forget all that frustration when you finally track down one of those discs – and many of the game's other well-hidden treasures – and know you 100% earned your reward.

As for my scorpion problem, I kept exploring in the hopes of finding better resources and crafting stronger weapons and armour. Then I got distracted by about a million different other mini-mysteries to solve, like caverns sealed behind bombable walls. Or a toxic ant hive that surely must be hiding something amazing behind that disgusting description. Later, while I was being slaughtered by a praying mantis I probably shouldn't have tested my new bow on, I had a brainwave. What if I just lured the scorpion away from its hidey hole?

So which was the correct solution? Combat or distraction? Both! The beautiful thing about Grounded 2 is that, so long as you put in the effort, it's often accommodating to your makeshift solutions. I still think back fondly to the moment I realized I could build a massive staircase to reach the higher peaks of the garden in the original Grounded as fondly as any eureka moment in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Grounded 2 has that same build-your-way-out-of-trouble spirit. I love that the base-building and the exploration don't live in separate silos, even if I'm not proud of my swearing after I've constructed a massive staircase to somewhere tricky only to immediately discover an easier way up.

The story's intriguing, with a mysterious antagonist who keeps hacking into your comms for a sinister chat. It’s a lot talkier than the fairly lonely original, but sharp writing means this isn’t really a problem. Ominent also has a new CEO who gets some of the funniest lines, which is impressive considering how many corpses of her staff you'll find lying around the park.

A powerful corporation with little care for their employees? Where does this Microsoft-owned studio get its ideas from? Really the only misstep the writing makes is that the protagonist's repeated quips are once again pretty grating. Ally, if you compare this roast aphid to your grandma's cooking one more bloody time, then I'm going to personally feed you to this pit of scorpions.

Rideable mounts aside, it's currently more of a Grounded 1.5 than a proper sequel, which is presumably why it's in early access. But it's a graduate of the Hades 2 school of early access where your game is already massive. I've already clocked thirty hours. Obsidian's exemplary 2025 continues unabated then. Unless The Outer Worlds 2 box contains actual wolf spiders, this could be an all-time great year for the studio. Let's hope their owner doesn't celebrate that by shutting them down, eh?

Looking to conquer more worlds? Check out our best survival games list!