It’s still in early access, but the survival sandbox Grounded 2 has already attracted a substantial number of players. Xbox VP of marketing Aaron Greenberg said on Twitter that it already has 3 million players, just two weeks after its July 29 release.
Grounded 2 is Obsidian’s follow-up to the original Grounded, which launched in 2022. Like the original, you play as one of four plucky teens who find themselves shrunk down and left to fend for themselves in the vast wilderness of ordinary suburbia. Ordinary bugs like mites, ants, and spiders become larger-than-life threats.
While the first game took place in a back yard, a la Honey I Shrunk The Kids, the sequel takes place in a public park. Alongside a host of quality-of-life features and an original story, the sequel’s biggest new addition is rideable mounts. If you’ve ever wanted to treat a fire ant like your royal steed, here you go.
We had a good early sense that Grounded 2 was destined to be a hit, since it beat the original game’s concurrent Steam player count within the first hour of release. And since that’s Steam, it doesn’t even count Xbox players, which surely makes up a significant chunk of the player count since it’s included with Game Pass.
“Because of its stronger starting point, Grounded 2 should wind up the bigger, better, buggier-in-a-good-way survival game,” Mark Delaney wrote in GameSpot’s Grounded 2 review-in-progress. “Its best new toys make survival gameplay much smoother and more enjoyable; the adolescent spirit that truly makes Grounded stand out in a sea of survival games is still on full display here, too. It will take some time for Creative mode to catch up and eventually surpass what the first game did for those who like to play this game more like an interior decorator than a hunter-gatherer. All of that means Grounded 2 is a good early-access game that improves on its previous version in some big ways, while still earning the label of being an in-progress experience.”
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