Grounded is normal. The content of the game is not ordinary. The story is that the background is very plain. From the yard of a house that can be found anywhere in the immediate vicinity, the inside of the fence, the green grass, and the tiny insects in it, there is nothing unusual regarding it.
However, Grounded threw the setting of a ‘small character’ in such mediocrity, and that small setting changed the peaceful background thrillingly and rapidly. So, alone or with friends, we can survive, build, and experience stories in this tense ‘small world’.
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normal? no special survival
How can a simple family house and yard feel so huge? Grounded made great use of the character’s reduced vision and the situation. The general background, which is so trivial, was brought to life as a perfect survival background with only a difference in gaze.
The yard is full of just ordinary things. Green grass, short clover, small sprouts and mushrooms, rolling pebbles, dandelion spores, and traces of ‘play’ scattered here and there are just ordinary things that can be found in the yard of any house.
However, the mediocrity comes with freshness and grandeur that have not been experienced only by changing the perspective of ‘smaller’. Grass and clover have to be cut down with an axe, and the mud puddles left here and there are huge obstacles that you have to swim through.
However, not everything is just a hurdle. The dew on the grass becomes clean water that you can drink with confidence, and the insects you catch hard on and the mushrooms you pluck out become food to satisfy your hunger by roasting them over a fire. The dandelion spores that fell on the floor become wings for the glide, the clover leaves cut with an ax become armor, and the grass becomes the walls and flooring material of the hideout where you can spend the night safely.
These insignificant things, all things that might just end up as obstacles or background objects, are all used as useful things directly related to survival in Grounded. And all the ordinary things make the game special because it is something that is not used in a normal survival or sandbox type game.
Which game will make armor from clover leaves or insect shells, or pebbles and sprouts to make axes and hammers? Grounded drew an ordinary but unusual survival game just by shifting his gaze slightly.
The background of Grounded is very peaceful. There are no terrific enemies appearing, nor does it lead to extreme situations like the apocalypse, zombies, or war. The background of the game is just a general yard of a typical family house. There is only one thing in the yard: insects and natural objects. However, only with the setting of the characters as small as a bean, Grounded drew tension that was not lacking in any extreme setting.
A variety of insects that you can encounter in the yard, such as a cute running green aphid, a red ant that annoys the aphid, a mosquito that is annoying just by the sound, a giant stink bug, and a scary wolf spider from its appearance to its name, etc. The more you explore, the more terrifying you become.
Shortly following starting the game, Norinjae, whom he encountered, killed the character very lightly with one touch of his leg, and the green world, which seemed so peaceful, turned into a very terrifying place with just one stroke. Not only that. In the beginning, the small, red insects that were gnawing at the wires attacked the characters who approached them with only an ax without a spear and drove them to the brink of death.
Other than that, a character who wandered around without much thought died because there was no water, and there was nothing to eat, so he quickly picked up raw mushrooms or insect meat and ate it. At times, the crudely made skewer that he confidently carried as a weapon, or even a spear, was swung a few times before running away due to lack of vitality.
When the night passes and the frantic day to survive, the fear comes stronger. This is because if you do not find a safe place and prepare a place to sleep, you will be attacked by insects that sneak in from the dark without your knowledge, even mice or birds. I haven’t found the right place yet, but how frightened I was at that time when the surroundings were getting darker.
In this way, Grounded fully expressed the tension that a survival game should have with only the very basic and mundane of insects, thirst, and hunger through the change of gaze. To the extent that spiders and stink bugs approaching from afar are more frightening than zombies, monsters, or giant beasts in other survival games.
Overflowing crafting, the right story
However, Grounded is not only focused on the aspect of survival. Crafting to build and create something is also enjoyable enough.
First of all, it provides a variety of crafting elements in the game. Basic elements such as floors, walls, and windows are natural, but there are enough construction elements to create a nice lawn hideaway, such as a multi-story structure, nice columns, and flooring at different angles instead of just squares.
Not only that. In order to fully experience the basic premise of the game of survival, a basket to obtain water, a field to grow something, a fire pit to make a fire, a bed to sleep in safely, a crafting table to create numerous items, etc. All additional tools are available.
What stands out in this crafting aspect is the ‘blueprint’. First of all, rather than just starting with construction, you can build a literal blueprint that you can check directly before construction, such as what kind of hiding place you will make and how you will place the furniture.
Usually, when using construction elements, unless you are a person with a certain sense of game, you often experience a lot of trial and error. There are wonderful finished products that come to mind, but in the process of building them up on the actual ground, of course, unexpected errors occur. Because of such errors, most users repeat the process of disassembling, building, and dismantling once more.
The fact that there are various construction elements means that it is more complicated, and it is also a story that goes through more trial and error. However, Grounded provided a very free blueprint, making it easy to reverse the process of trial and error. The hassle and burden of construction were greatly reduced.
There is one more thing to enjoy. It’s a story. Children can experience various stories of what is behind the reduced background and whether they will be able to return to their original form.
What stands out is that the story progression is not essential. Obviously, there are various missions, including the main story quest, but it is up to the user to play them. Just because you don’t progress through the story doesn’t mean you can’t build a hideout, and it doesn’t mean you can’t meet insects.
All that is needed in Grounded is the process of obtaining materials and analyzing the obtained materials. The tutorial ends there too. It teaches only the very basics of how to play, such as how to move, how to analyze materials, how to quench thirst and hunger, and how to craft something.
If you want to know the background story, you can proceed one by one through the survival method you learned in this way.
Grounded’s diverse playstyles play a big role in a variety of granular options.
It’s not just an option that determines the difficulty of the game. An option to be free from management of hunger, thirst, and vitality, an option to be safe from insect attacks, an accessibility option to change the shape of a spider for those who are afraid of spiders, everything according to the user’s play tendency There are so many different and different detailed options that you can configure. In addition, you can change the first-person and third-person perspectives, so you can also match the outside of the game.
These detailed options allow you to abandon the element of survival and focus on construction, or allow you to experience only the story without paying attention to both construction and survival. Conversely, there is an option to turn it off so that you do not care regarding the mission itself.
Not only that. You can adjust the degree of play even if you focus on a specific tendency. You can open all recipes and play the game so that only construction can be done, or you can adopt an appropriate method of collecting materials one by one.
The same goes for enjoying the element of survival. You can turn off other elements to focus on fighting insects, or you can survive in a really extreme environment and extreme difficulty.
Certainly, Grounded shows a high degree of perfection as it took two years from early access to official release. It feels like the balance of various elements, including not only survival, but also construction and story, is well balanced.
In particular, it characteristically captures the parts of survival and construction that are basically required in such a survival game, such as identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each insect and attacking or defending accordingly, building a safe hiding place and protecting it. Also, Grounded has an advantage in that the ordinary ‘yard’ was created as a wonderful survival background with only a change of viewpoint and a slight addition of settings.
But, above all else, the biggest advantage is that you can venture into this terrifying yard with your friends and struggle to survive. The difficulty of fear and survival is halved when divided, but the joy is doubled.
