Grounded (XB/Steam/Game Pass/Switch/PS) - Over 20m players. Out now on Switch & PS4/5 with the Fully Yoked update.

Parksey wrote:What sort of game is this then? A live service game, similar to maybe Fallout on survival mode?

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:I too have been thinking about getting into this game after watching some streams, AND I have the "necessary hardware"

Is it bad / horribly grindy in SP though?

Monkey Man wrote:

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:I too have been thinking about getting into this game after watching some streams, AND I have the "necessary hardware"

Is it bad / horribly grindy in SP though?

I've been playing it in SP and loving it. It's not grindy and you can choose yourself how deep you get into it. You can just build the basics and go through the story like I am or go full "Jawa in Fallout 76" mode and build yourself a castle. I've not done it but there's lots of options to lessen or turn off the survival aspects.

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The Grounded team is excited to bring Update 1.2.0 to the community today. Rightfully titled The Super Duper update, this massive update brings with it many quality-of-life changes, more than a hundred new items to craft, a brand new Base Coziness feature, and wasps, a new terrifying creature to fight. But first, let’s dive into the Super Duper… an item duplication machine!

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What you need to know

The Make It or Break It Update is the next major content update for Grounded, Xbox's bug-sized survival game.
The update introduces a ton of new vanity items, completely overhauls BURG.L quests, and brings hundreds of system changes and improvements.
The headlining feature is actually Playgrounds, though, a new sandbox that'll allow players to build and share anything they want in the Backyard using a huge number of tools.
The 1.3 Make It or Break It Update is heading to all Grounded players on Nov. 13, 2023.

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Cumberdanes wrote:Looking forward to the new update, maybe there’ll be some new gear to help beat the bloody Infected Broodmother

Grounded's introduction to PS5 and Switch isn't a smooth one then, and especially running on Sony's latest hardware, the slipshod performance on PS5 is hard to excuse. Running between 45 and 60fps, with worse image quality than on Series X, albeit with higher settings elsewhere, is far from an optimal balance. So many Xbox Game Studios titles landing on PS5 have done so with unusual differences - like the differing shadows in Hi Fi Rush - but at least performance has been equivalent. For Grounded though, in a cross-play game between a PS5 and Series X, I know which one I'd rather play right now.

Looking at Switch meanwhile, the inherent limits of the hardware put it in a different league to those top-end machines. As ever it's fascinating to see how it works, purely as an academic exercise - to see if it can be done. The many visual cutbacks do mean we get to 30fps, but realistically, as a way to enjoy Grounded in the long-term, it's a hard one to really recommend. At a push, playing on Switch's smaller screen might help hide some of its issues, though it's an uphill battle to enjoy the game with uneven frame-times and heavy pop-in. For now then, I'd suggest the best optimised Grounded experience is still on Xbox Series X, Series S and PC.