I know this has been going on for a while now, but it still feels bizarre to see an Xbox Game Studios title, complete with the Xbox logo, running on a PlayStation console. After the absolute assault on logic that was seeing Halo on the system, the latest Microsoft published game to land on the PS5 is Grounded 2, the sequel to Obsidian’s “we have Honey, I Shrunk the Kids at home” survival game. I never played the original, despite hearing plenty of good things about it from my WTMG colleagues, so I was eager to jump into this big adventure in a small package… albeit in perhaps the strangest way possible.

The survival genre isn’t exactly lacking in competition these days, so Grounded 2 has plenty to prove. In a market already saturated with high quality survival games, how does Obsidian’s tiny adventure manage to stand out from the crowd?

This game makes me want to play A Bug’s Life on Nintendo 64 again.

For the uninitiated, the Grounded games are traditional survival titles where you play as pre-teens tasked with building a base, gathering resources, and fending off against enemies in a hostile environment. So far, fairly basic for a game in the genre. The main catch is that the hostile environment in question is actually a common garden, and your protagonist has been shrunk to the size of a bug. Every single blade of grass is as big as a tree, every single ant is a ferocious beast you have to fend off against. You are trying to survive with much smaller means and less access to common resources as other games in the genre. Grounded 2 takes place a few years after the first game, with a plot revolving around an evil corporation, a professor who may have gone mad, and you having been shrunk for the second time, having to sort things out.

Grounded 2 features a surprisingly decent storyline, considering it’s a multiplayer-focused survival game. You can play it solo, though.

One thing I like about Grounded 2, which is a sentiment I share with most of my favorite survival games, is that it doesn’t feature a randomly generated map in its main campaign mode. Also, the fact it has a campaign mode. It’s not just a mere “here’s the world, figure stuff out and make your own story” kind of game. There is a set plot, a mystery to unfold, and the progression system feels nature and well-earned. I’m not looking for items at random, hoping for RNGesus to be kind to me. I can quickly grasp the stakes, understand the plot, the objectives, and so on. The wacky premise is just the icing on the cake.

Grounded 2 is not a very revolutionary survival game in terms of its gameplay-loop. You pick up materials, craft items, fend off against predators and bigger foes with makeshift weapons, and figure out how to eat and drink by either collecting food and water on the overworld, or by using your more modern tools to help you out. It’s really about the scope and the setting. And by scope, I mean that you are a minuscule speck of a being thrown into a world that feels a thousand times larger than you. If you grew up playing the criminally underrated A Bug’s Life for Nintendo 64, you know what I’m talking about.

Feels like I’m actually riding a mythical beast, and not just a mere annoying vector for disease.

But there are some other interesting aspects about the gameplay loop. For starters, I liked the fact that you don’t need to have, for instance, one shovel, one axe, one hammer, and so on. You have one multifunctional tool that works for all of your necessary extractions and busy work; all you have to do is upgrade it at a workbench in order to give it additional functionalities. It makes the overall bureaucratic part of a survival game, the resource collection, feel less of a chore, and more practical.

You can also eventually tame and ride some specific “beasts”, and not just your go-to rideable ants: you can even attempt to tame a flying insect and use it as the most practical means of transportation Grounded 2 has to offer. It’s not the easiest task, and your companion animal can die depending on the difficulty level, but it is one of the game’s most interesting selling points. That and the admittedly awesome boss battles, where even a gecko or a lizard can look and feel like you’re fighting against a dragon boss from a From Software game.

The moment when you realize that exploring an ant hill is more tense than most modern horror games.

It’s hard to make a survival game stand out in a market this saturated with carbon copies and lookalikes. Grounded 2 doesn’t exactly revolutionize the genre with its gameplay loop, but I still had a good time with it thanks to a handful of genuinely interesting elements. Its streamlined resource collection system cuts down on some of the usual survival game busywork, its structured single player campaign actually feels like a proper part of the experience rather than an afterthought, and its setting remains easily its biggest selling point. It’s no Subnautica (then again, what is?), but being able to ride a dragonfly that feels more dragon than fly? Yep, can’t complain. That’s some good stuff.

Grounded 2 is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of Grounded 2 was provided by the publisher.