During the X019 broadcast on Mixer from the ongoing event in London, Microsoft provided the first look at gameplay of Obsidian Entertainment’s new IP Grounded.
While we only saw a few small clips of gameplay, they showcased many interesting aspects of the game, like crafting, insects, building, equipment, and more.
You can check them out below.
There are several types of insects, some of which are docile, some are neutral, and some are hostile.
Docile insects are among the things you can hunt for food. Worker ants are nutral and are just exploring the place to find food for their own colony, but if you mess with them, soldier ants can appear and attack.
There are also different kinds of areas, starting from an easy grassland, to more dangerous ones like anthills and spider burrows. There are even areas that you can’t reach unless you craft some special items.
You can build your base with things like walls, windows, doors, ceelings. You can build your base small, or go all the way to large multi-store mansions getting an impressive vista from the top.
You can also build traps to help defend the base, trophy heads to decorate, and more.
According to Obsidian this is still a “super-fun game” if you play in single-player, but it’s even better in multiplayer with friends. It wasn’t mentioned if you’re required to be online even when playing solo.
For the moment there is no PvP, as Obsidian is focusing on the co-operative experience, but there is friendly fire.
In terms of equipment you can craft things like acorn armor, different types of headpieces, armor pieces, and armor pieces providing different status effects like better stamina, hauling strength, or damage reduction.
In terms of offense, for example you can craft spears that are good at long-range, and are effective against spiders. Different tools are good at dealing with different kinds of insects.
Each creature has its own AI, and players can interact with them in dynamic ways. You can compete with them for food sources, but if you kill all the insects they eat, they might migrate and change their food chain target, so player actions have consequences on what the insects do.
The game will have a regular cadence of free updates during preview. After Grounded is delivered in the hands of the players, Obsidian will listen to feedback from the community and go from there.
Grounded will be available on Game Preview, Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft Store, and Steam starting in Spring 2020.
If you’d like to see more, you can also check out the first trailer showing this small world in action, and the first gallery of screenshots.
