EARLY ACCESS REVIEW: ‘Grounded 2’ Is Bigger, Buggier, And Better

Getting shrunk down to the size of an ant and tossed into a city park doesn’t seem like a particularly fun outing, but for fans of a certain sci-fi film franchise, it’s a dream come true. Survival adventure game Grounded 2 allows players to live out their Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-based fantasies for the second time.

The title tasks them not just with surviving in a massive, to them, city park, but to thrive and overcome threats both from nature and from the nefarious conspiracies surrounding them. Developer Obsidian Entertainment and Publisher Xbox Game Studios have created a powerful sequel to their previous outing, stripping away some of the busywork and expanding on the most enjoyable aspects of gameplay.

Set two years after the original game, Grounded 2 moves players out of the now-familiar backyard and into a massive city park. The four children from the first game also return as protagonists, offering commentary tied to their personalities as you play the game.

The new Omni-Tool is a perfect replacement for the original game’s harvesting tools.

Peter likes to analyze his surroundings and occasionally refers to the insects by their scientific names, whereas Max likes to crack jokes and is more of a wise guy. While these have no bearing on gameplay, it can be fun to switch between the characters and hear different takes on the world, especially when playing with multiple people.

After a lengthy tutorial session, especially when compared to the original game, players are set loose upon the park. This tutorial introduces the Omni-Tool, a convenient replacement for your harvesting tools from the original game. This doesn’t completely trivialize your progression, however, since each tool it replaces still requires you to follow an upgrade path.

For instance, if you upgrade the axe function of the Omni-Tool to level two, your shoveling and smashing functions are still at level one until you’ve gathered the necessary materials to upgrade them. In essence, this new feature saves you from cluttering your inventory with tools of varying efficiencies, especially since the Omni-Tool doesn’t take up an inventory slot. This also saves you from having to constantly repair your degrading tools, allowing you to focus your resources on upgrading and maintaining your base, weapons, and armor.

New mounts called buggies change everything about Grounded 2.

When the original Grounded launched into Early Access, players could create a few sets of armor, explore a largely unfinished world, and complete the one story mission available. Since then, the game has been expanded upon with exciting locales, terrifying enemies, and a narrative that explores corporate greed and the power of scientific ambition in the wrong hands.

By comparison, Grounded 2 hits the ground running with a larger explorable map, a variety of weapons and weapon types, armor, and more. There is also plenty of story to follow, introducing players to their new home and some of the new features added to the sequel. Chief among these is the addition of mounts, known as buggies, and they change everything about the game.

Fairly early in the story, players are tasked with retrieving a soldier ant egg and hatching it into a loyal friend and pet. This rideable ally makes the decision to consolidate tools more obvious in retrospect; why waste time messing with degradable chopping tools when your new buggy can take down a forest of grass in a few minutes?

Setting up a base has never been easier or more rewarding.

Further, you can switch into Gather mode while riding them, converting buggies into a living vacuum that sucks up any small items and even stacks a dozen blades of grass for transportation or construction. Setting up a base has never been easier or more rewarding with the help of your insect ally.

Buggies also great for exploration, allowing players to explore the new, larger map at speeds previously unheard of, pushing blades of grass out of the way to get you where you need to be as fast as their six legs can scurry. Your buggy can also aid in combat, though the tougher enemies you’ll be facing may be too much for your friend.

Thankfully, mutations return in Grounded 2, letting you even the odds in a fight or complement your playstyle in other ways. With the addition of new enemies like Scorpions, Cockroaches, Caterpillars, and more, you’ll need every advantage you can get.

Obsidian gave Mutations a huge upgrade in Grounded 2.

A later addition in the original game, Mutations are passive skills that players could unlock by focusing on certain activities. Grounded 2 expands on the original playstyle-defining concept, letting players know from the start what they need to do to unlock most mutations, like killing 40 enemies with a hammer to unlock the relevant mutation, giving their attacks greater stunning power.

This allows players to carefully think about how they want to gear up from the start, which can be especially valuable when playing with friends. It might be amusing to turn the whole squad into hammer-wielding barbarians, stunning every enemy to death, but it can be more effective to diversify their talents, applying various boons to their attacks.

The narrative currently available in Grounded 2 is an exciting and more involved story this time around. No longer are players forced to communicate with BURG.L or abandon audio logs to fill in the blanks. This time, a few human characters, with their own mysterious agendas, provide a compelling story and objectives.

While Grounded 2’s story isn’t yet concluded, it’s off to a strong start.

It’s unclear who, if anyone, can be trusted, but the dire circumstances, as well as the promise of rewards like buggies, are powerful motivators to work with whoever you can to escape the park. While the story isn’t yet concluded, it’s off to a strong start, and I’m curious to see what twists players will inevitably experience on their journey to return to their normal size.

Grounded 2 is launching into Early Access, but as it is, there’s plenty to dig into now, with more to come eventually. If you enjoyed the previous game, you’ll love the sequel, and if you never tried the original, this is a good place to start. The developers at Obsidian knew what to pare down and what to expand upon from the first game, making their next small step a big leap ahead for the series.

Grounded 2 releases in Early Access on July 29th, 2025 on PC and Xbox Series X|S