As expected, Microsoft yesterday confirmed that four of their games are headed to rival consoles: Pentiment to PlayStations 4 & 5 and Nintendo Switch; Hi-Fi Rush to PS5; Grounded to PS4, PS5, and Switch; and Sea Of Thieves to PS5. It's nice to see barriers between systems coming down and all, and it'll likely have consequences of note to serious businessheads, but what relevance does this have for us as a PC gaming website? Well! Grounded and Sea Of Thieves will support cross-platform multiplayer, so we'll be able to play them with our consolatory chums. That's nice.
]]>Hot (weeks) off the back of Sons Of The Forest and the Resident Evil 4 remake coming out, we're celebrating your bestest best, most favourite survival games this month. Your votes have been counted and tallied, and your accompanying words of praise and affection matched accordingly. But which game has survived to make it to the top of the pile? Come and find out as we count down your 25 favourite survival games of all time.
]]>With all the doors on our RPS Advent Calendar well and truly busted open for 2022 now, we thought it was high time to gather all of our favourite games of the year together in one handy location. If you've been diligently scoffing our Advent treats throughout December, then you'll already know what our game of the year picks are for 2022, but just in case you missed them or want to go through them one final time, we've got 'em all right here for you in our definitive Games Of The Year list. Enjoy!
]]>A week of Advent Calendar posts already! Time flies when you're having fun, but it also flies when you're very small and have to survive in garden that's suddenly the size of a forest. Mind the spiders.
]]>Boo! Did I startle you? GOOD. I'm currently competing for the title of trickster-in-chief here at RPS, and I'm never going to have a chance of receiving this promotion unless I reach my daily scare quota. If only there was a way I could package together a collection of scary stories as told my colleagues and claim them all as my own.
Aha! I got you again! They don't call me the Merry Trickster Of UK PC Gaming Websites for nothing! You've been Halloween'd, my friends! To celebrate spooky season, I gathered seven members of the RPS treehouse to tell me about one moment from a PC game that scared them the most. The results were exactly as I expected. Some recounted events in classic horror games that shocked them senseless, whereas others told me anecdotes about games that most wouldn't consider scary at all. The result is seven tales of spooks that are sure to chill your bones this All Hallows' Eve.
]]>I'm not a very big enjoyer of horror games. On the very rare occasion that I do boot up a horror game, a chemical change seems to occur in my body. The part of my brain responsible for going "holy mother of hell get me away from this scary thing" is dampened. I expect to be scared, and therefore I'm more resilient to said scariness. I might just not be very good at getting into the horror games mindset. My brain is too busy battening down all the hatches and readying the engines of war against the oncoming spookies and ghosties.
The times I've been most scared playing a game are when I don't expect to be scared. And what better way to lull myself into a false sense of security this Halloween than to play an otherwise not-so-scary game, with just one particularly horror-esque moment?
]]>When Grounded released into early access a little over two years ago, it immediately became a personal favourite. The story wasn't complete and the garden was rather basic, but one encounter with the wolf spider proved that this was far more than a pile of mulch. With two years of updates layering new enemies, items, biomes, dungeons, and quests onto that healthy foundation, Grounded has blossomed into a perennial survival game that sits comfortably among the very best of the genre.
]]>Miniaturised survival game Grounded doesn't have dedicated servers, but the latest update offered up for public testing contains a new feature that'll help. It's called "Shared Worlds", and it allows Grounded worlds to be stored in the cloud so that anyone that world is shared with can host the game.
]]>It was announced during E3 2022 that honey-I-shrunk-the-survival-game Grounded would leave early access and hit version 1.0 this September. An update on Twitter earlier today offered info on what the final early access update, which enters public testing today, has in store for players. It also revealed a more specific release date for 1.0: September 27th.
]]>Teenage garden survive ‘em up Grounded has been greenlit to become an animated series. It’ll be adapted by Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels writer Brent Friedman. Oh my gosh, I just finally got the game's name. Watch the trailer for Grounded’s September launch below while I shrink in embarrassment.
]]>Obsidian have announced that their co-op garden survival game Grounded will burst forth from early access into a full 1.0 release like a seed in your backyard this September. A story campaign playable in co-op or solo will explain how Grounded’s kids were shrunk by a mad scientist, and probably persuade me to finally give it a go. Watch out for colossal bugs in the trailer below.
]]>Obsidian's Honey I Shrunk The Kids 'em up survival sandbox Grounded is adding an actual sandbox this month, along with its first dungeon, and a big old pile of trash. This all arrives in the Hot and Hazy update on October 20th, which will give players new places to explore and new creepy crawlies to fight. It's also revamping an existing biome, and you can try it all out right now on a test branch if you fancy.
]]>Obsidian's Honey I Shrunk The Kids-like survival game Grounded has many wonderful creatures, including some excellent ants that Sin said she would die for. Unfortunately, it also has terrifying spiders, and the developers thought it would be a good idea to add an even bigger one. The game's Shroom & Doom update drops on June 30th, bringing with it new mushroomy structures, and the Broodmother.
]]>Over the last few years, early access games have evolved. Games are launching into early access more polished than ever before, and the line between unfinished early access games and "live service" games is increasingly blurred.
To find out more about how things have changed since Steam Early Access first started in 2013, I spoke to the developers of Darkest Dungeon, Baldur's Gate 3, Hades, Grounded and GTFO. They told me about the concerns and difficulties of launching a game after the first early access trailblazers, what they've learned about making games in public, and why they'd be happy to do it all again.
]]>Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's a swarm of bees, mosquitos and fireflies descending on Obsidian's sandbox adventure, Grounded. Yesterday, the game added flying insects and a load of new things to craft from them in its 0.60 update. I am very happy about the addition of bees. I am very unhappy, however, that there is an option to attack them. I will fight you if I see you whack a bee.
]]>There's never been a better time to get into survival games on PC, as the recent revival of the genre means Steam is now awash in some truly great games, both in early access and in full release. There are more arriving every year, too, which is why we've done the hard work for you and ranked the very best survival games to dive into today. Fair warning - there are some early access games on this list, which mean they might be a little janky early on. Give them the time they deserve, though, and you'll find they often blossom into some truly great games over subsequent updates. We've only included the very best and most complete-feeling survival games on this list, though, so you can rest assured that every game here will leave you hungry for more. It's by no means exhaustive, but it should give you a nice selection of wolf-taming, base-building, carrot-picking action to choose from.
]]>It's time to go swimming with the fishes in Grounded. I don't mean that menacingly, though. Yesterday, Obsidian added a big koi pond to their Honey I Shrunk The Kids-like sandbox, so you can literally go for a little swim with some aquatic lads now.
Actually, wait, the pond does sound quite dangerous.
"This boss of the pond might only have one good eye, but it only needs one eye to notice you, and you never, ever, want it to notice you," the devs say of that chonking great koi.
]]>Honey I Shrunk The Kids 'em up Grounded has taken a step into the deep end. The next update for Obsidian's teeny tiny survival sandbox opens up the Koi Pond, letting you dive into murky puddles while evading dangerous goldfish and submerged spiders. The pool will open for everyone next month - but if you're feeling antsy, you can dive in right now via the public test server.
]]>The backyard is booming and boo-ing with new stuff in early access miniature survival game Grounded. Obsidian have added a new zipline structure to help your tiny little people with traversal and some spooky new food and décor for Halloween. They've made some bug fixes to the game's many bugs as well.
]]>As we all know at this point, I am a big fan of the ants in Obsidian's new early access survival game Grounded. But the ants aren't the only thing I ask about when I interview Obsidian's Adam Brennecke, the game's lead designer.
In Grounded you play as a child, or group of children working together, who has been mysteriously shrunk down so that a normal suburban garden becomes a huge jungle. It's a great idea, but I'm curious where Grounded came from conceptually. Did they set out to make a survival game that eventually became about being tiny and encountering giant ants and spiders, or was there a particular idea or concept that came before that? It turns out it's the former.
]]>It's been less than a month since ant-bothering shrinky garden survival game Grounded entered early access, but in the current era, three weeks could mean anything between a day and four hundred years.
In any case, I'm rather fond of the game, and have attacked my own friends for daring to menace its ants, as warned. So you can probably imagine how excited I got at the prospect of interviewing its lead designer, Obsidian's Adam Brennecke, about the ants. That's not all I asked him about, and I'll have more to share next week, but this article today is about mostly about the ants.
]]>Tiny-person-in-a-garden survival sim Grounded will be getting bees and mosquitoes, and monthly updates as part of its ongoing early access development, Obsidian have said.
]]>Spider Silk is an extremely valuable material in Grounded, and it's no understatement to say that obtaining Spider Silk is a gateway from the early game to the mid-game of Obsidian Entertainment's fantastic survival experience. In this Grounded Spider guide, we'll walk you through exactly how you can obtain Spider Silk, alongside some handy and practical tips on defeating Orb Weavers and other Spiders.
]]>Quartzite is a fairly important resource in Grounded, and one which has eluded a great many players during their first ventures into this fascinating survival game. In this guide, we'll reveal all the locations we've discovered where you can mine Quartzite in Grounded, along with what you can use it for once you have it.
]]>You have possibly already heard about the Facebook group called "A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony". Statistically speaking, it is likely that some of you are members. It prompted many slightly bemused articles around May and April of this year, as outlets like Buzzfeed tried to parse what it was and why over a million and a half people were members of it. Really, its aims were and are simple and few, and mostly stated in the title: everyone pretends to be an ant. The group loves ants and ant content. We BITE, LIFT and WORK for the QUEEN.
There are now almost two million members in the group, which has diversified the kind of ant content getting shared, and recently my ant family discovered Grounded, Obsidian's new early access survival game. You play as a child or team of children who've been shranken down to insect size, and must survive in the now dangerous jungle that is a suburban back garden. There is, as Sin pointed out, a lot of good ant content in Grounded. The colony likes this.
]]>The standard edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator costs £59, but like me trying to show my parents their house from a Airbus A320neo, we can go lower. A lot lower, as it turns out. Here’s how you can play (but not own) what’s looking to be the first game of the next, next, next-generation for as low as £1. And you get over 200 other games with it as well.
]]>I threw a spear at the first person to harm an ant. They were warned. But the lag meant I kept missing and it just got a bit embarassing, so we retrieved the spears and went back to scouting for dewdrops.
Grounded's multiplayer has captured something special. Even after several hours (which flew by for all of us), we found it hard to pin down exactly what about it was so... likeable. In its current state of development, I can't quite recommend it as wholeheartedly as I want to. We had too many technical problems. But if it can overcome those during its early access period, it may well be game of the year material.
]]>Ants are a strong contender for the most fascinating creature on the planet. Arguably the most successful animal (discounting micro-organisms, those smug jerks), even. I was fascinated by them as a kid. There's an ant with only one pair of chromosomes. There are ants that transform themselves into food storage units. There are kamikaze ants that defend their nest by exploding. Blind ants. Ants that form nests, bridges and even boats out of their own bodies. Ants that go to war, ants that farm, herd animals, spy on other colonies, take slaves.
In Grounded, Obsidian's new mini-sized survival game, it doesn't even take any of that to secure my undying love. When an ant sees you for the first time, it chirrups curiously, and tilts its head like a dog.
I love them. I will never harm them. If I ever play with another person and they attack an ant, I will fight them to the death.
]]>If you've ever wondered what it's like to become a very tiny child forced to survive in the jungle that is your own back garden, well, today is your day. Obsidian's Honey I Shrunk The Kids-like, Grounded, releases in early access at around 6pm BST, inviting you to make spears out of twigs and create armour from the carcasses of your buggy foes. I mean buggy as in, you will have to fight bugs - though it is in early access, so I suppose you could be fighting the other kinds of bugs, too.
]]>Obsidian Entertainment tonight announced an early access launch date of July 28th for Grounded, their craft-o-survival game about teenagers shrunk down smaller than ants and turned loose in a back garden. If I've learned anything from the oeuvre of Rick Moranis, is that those kids are in for a tough time. It's a surprising game to see coming from a studio known for RPGs including The Outer Worlds, South Park: The Stick Of Truth, and Pillars Of Eternity, but who are you to pigeonhole them? While we've mostly heard about the four-player co-op so far, tonight's new look focused on the singleplayer side. Observe!
]]>Transforming the ordinary into the fantastical. It’s a tenet of Magical Realist fiction, Brechtian theatre, staring too long at your hands while on edibles, and now Grounded, a new survival RPG from Obsidian. It features four plucky teens, a shrink-ray experiment and a mundane back garden transformed into a vast, dangerous, colorful wilderness. Gnats are now the size of your face. You can build trampolines from spider webs, or armour from acorns. Part Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and part Ark: Survival Evolved, Grounded is a game brave enough to ask, "What if those tiny cartons of fruit juice with the sippy straws that America calls ‘juice boxes’ were like, absolutely massive?"
I recently watched a short presentation at Obsidian HQ and got a chance to chat with Grounded’s director, Adam Brennecke. Typical to the storied studio, there’s very few aspects of Grounded that haven’t been approached with a world-builder’s eye for detail and place. Even with Obsidian keeping some big story and setting reveals close to their chest, there’s a lot to get through.
]]>Obsidian Entertainment, the gang behind The Outer Worlds and Alpha Protocol, have announced a new game and it is... not an RPG? It's named Grounded and it's a survival game with more than a whiff of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, having us play as kiddywinkles shrunk down smaller than creepy-crawlies. Trying to survive in a garden looks a touch more challenging at that scale. We'll be able to tell you more in a wee preview real soon but, for now, here's the announcement trailer.
Update: Even sooner than I thought, the embargo has lifted - check out our Grounded preview.
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