Grounded 2 | All The Small Things

ITG OG — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:24:00 +0000

Grounded 2 is actually a game I’ve seen for a while now, since I tend to check GamePass pretty often. I also look for couch co-op games frequently because my girlfriend plays with me sometimes. That said, every time I’ve come across this one, I’ve dismissed it; thinking it might feel a bit too simplistic for me (boy was I wrong, but we’ll get to that later) and too giant-spidery for my girlfriend.

We happened upon Real Civil Engineer playing this game one day, though. And to my surprise, she actually seemed interested. We were both ready for something new, so we downloaded it and dove in.

Sometimes I don’t know why I do a spoiler disclaimer. Like, how could there not be spoilers about the game in a post about the game? Anyway, proceed with caution!

The storyline of Grounded 2 has you playing as one of four teens who have somehow been shrunken down to the size of a Nickel, a-la Honey I Shrunk the Kids, or Downsizing. Technically, this is the second time these kids have been shrunk down (this is Grounded 2).

A Quick Recap

Apparently in the first game, the kids were able to re-grow themselves with the help of a robot named BURG.L. At the beginning of this game (from what I can gather) the scientist who shrunk you down is having a meltdown over being thwarted, and is taking it out on said Robot. The kids want to save their friend, though, so they’ve come to the park to stop the scientist when an explosion happens. And once again, they’ve woken up small.

Since being shrunken the first time, a completely different group of people have taken over the corporation responsible for shrinking. You’re able to communicate with the new Director/CEO, who seems just as confused as you are about what happened and why you’re shrunk again.

There’s also a mysterious stranger who’s taunting you (and periodically sending bugs to attack you), and you need to figure out her role in all of this. So far, I’ve been having a surprising amount of fun exploring this park as a miniaturized person, climbing picnic tables like they’re mountains, and struggling to kill bugs I’d usually just smush with a shoe.

So, What are We Actually Doing?

Grounded 2 is an adventure survival game with resource-harvesting, crafting, inventory management, progressive unlocks etc. Dandelions and blades of grass are towering over you like trees, and you chop them down in order to obtain larger construction materials like planks and logs. Tiny “pebblets” (pieces of stone smaller than pebbles), sprigs (pre-grown grass), and acorns (acorns) act as smaller construction material. They’re also used for crafting your first weapons, pieces of armor, and spots needed to make more advanced items (like workbenches and cooking stations).

Food and water is important, too. There are weevils and aphids that you can cook to eat — and some mushrooms you can grab in a pinch. And since you’re so small, a simple dewdrop on the tip of a blade of grass is all that’s necessary to quench your thirst for the day. It’s honestly pretty adorable (initially).

Enemies, naturally, take the form of bugs; and at this size, they might as well be dinosaurs. Borderline-microscopic critters (like the aforementioned aphids) are the size of small kittens, and ants are the size of Big Cats. And those are just the first few foes you’ll encounter.

Ladybugs, butterflies, bees, and of course spiders, and roaches (and more) all make an appearance. There is an arachnophobia slider in the settings to make spiders less triggering. I’m not sure how it changes them, though, I left my slider at “maximum spider”.

Of course, as you progress through the game and create better items everything gets slightly easier to manage. Only slightly, though, because, frankly, this game is pretty tough. And I’m playing on the easiest difficulty. I thought this game was going to be a mild, casual game to play with my girlfriend; but it’s been giving me a real challenge so far.

Cache-Collecting, Controlling Character, & Combat

The controls are relatively simple, but they’ve still managed to provide quite a challenge. You’re given an “Omni-tool” that can turn into a hammer, axe, shovel, or repair tool as needed. Simply holding the “Omni-tool” button (‘X’ by default on Xbox) near the item you’re trying to gather will gather that item.

You don’t have to switch, say, from a hammer after destroying a rock to the axe in order to chop down a tree. You just hold the button and it works. And there’s no wear on the Omni-tool, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking or having to repair or create a new one later. So that’s nice.

Harvesting leaves a bit to be desired, Though. A lot of the items will slide away from you or clip below another item so you can’t access them. You’ll end up chasing things down a lot of time to grab them. That said, looting dead bugs put all available items directly in your inventory (if you have the slots) so that’s nice.

And while I’m on the subject of items clipping through the ground — backpacks tend to do that. Several times when we’ve died, we’d return to the spot where we died (guided by the backpack icon) just to find out it’s actually an additional 30cm* below that.

It doesn’t happen every time, fortunately. And there is a temporary fix — you can teleport your backpacks to the starting area. But it’s frustrating to have to do so (especially since there’s no fast travel!), and you can only do it once per save.

*I do love how they measure distances in centimeters in this game. It’s a fun touch

Movement

Traversing the world is largely on foot, and unfortunately, there’s no double-jump. Within the “mutations” menu, there’s a hidden upgrade under “Exploration”, which suggests there will be another way to move around the world in the future; but so far, I haven’t found out what it is yet*.

*I’ve beaten the storyline, and still nothing — the storyline is unfinished, though, and the next tool upgrades seemingly don’t actually exist; so maybe it’s a plan for the future.

Given that you’re so small, being on top of something as simple as a picnic table makes you feel like you’re hundreds of feet in the air. And the gaps between the table’s slats, barely big enough for food to fall through, are giant chasms at this size. And if you fall off of something as high as a four story building — like your average backpack — you can use a dandelion tuft as a bit of a parachute to land softly, which is fun.

To help yourself get around a bit better, you can actually hatch an ant as a companion to ride. The ant is quite fast, can get over obstacles better than you can on foot, will help you in combat, and can even act as additional storage.

That said, I found myself not using my ant all that often. Primarily because of the Mutations you can apply to your character (more on those later). One of the mutations will increase the rate that your stamina recovers; but in order to unlock it (and it’s subsequent levels which improve the mutation), you have to deplete your stamina a bunch of times. I wanted to make sure I got the top level of that, so I ran pretty much everywhere; and essentially just got used to it.

Also, the ants combat assistance continues after your character dies. While you’re respawning and figuring out how to get back to your stuff, your ant is still fighting the enemy that killed you; and will often die itself doing so. You can call your ant to you as soon as you respawn, but you have to actually think to do that — which you won’t know to do at first. At least we didn’t, assuming our ants would continue to follow us like it did everywhere else (to an almost annoying point).

When your ant dies, there is a cooldown, seemingly, until you can call your ant again. And I have seen them come back after dying. But more often than not, we’ve looked up and are missing our ant. It’s not following us like it usually does, it doesn’t come when called, and when we open the companion menu, there’s no ants to be found.

Granted there is an anthill that can be built that we haven’t used yet. And that may facilitate the respawning of ants. But if that were the case, I’d love to see some acknowledgement of that. Say, a pop-up or something after the ant dies that says “build an anthill to bring your ant back” or something.

It’s the most obvious after loading back in to the game — either starting up a new session, or simply because the game crashed (which it does fairly often). Maybe there’s an issue where your ant disappears if the game quits or is closed before the cooldown is up. I’m not sure what the culprit is, but we’re each on our third ant. Maybe there’s something we’re missing but it just seems buggy (pun intended).

Combat

I mentioned earlier that this game is surprisingly tough, and combat is one of the reasons why. Fighting consists of pressing the right trigger to attack, the left trigger to block, and ‘B’ (on Xbox) to dodge. You can also do a perfect block (parry) by hitting the trigger at the exact moment they hit you. It’s relatively simplistic, but it’s anything but easy.

The window of opportunity to perfect block is larger than a lot of games that I’ve played; and the enemies attack patterns aren’t incredibly complicated. But there’s still times where blocking feels muddy, and you end up getting hit when you were sure you timed the perfect block correctly.

Even the initial bugs you come across, like ants, provide a decent challenge — they take a lot of hits to kill, and they do a decent amount of damage. I ran an archer build for a while and oftentimes simply dodging just didn’t cut it.

The bigger-stronger bugs are even more bullet-spongey, and some even have status effects like Venom or Sizzle. That’s not to even mention the damn stink bugs that release a gas cloud that damages you. You can make a gas mask that negates the effect of the bug’s cloud — but you need to kill a stink bug in order to make it. Kind of a catch-22.

Enemies also pretty relentless. There were several occasions I accidentally came across an aforementioned stinkbug or something, but knew I didn’t want to fight it. So I ran. But despite running well outside of where I found them, and seemingly running for a while (though it’s not like I timed it), I’d turn around and they’d still be there. You can get away. It’s possible. But make sure to keep running, and hope your health isn’t already low in the initial encounter — they’ll probably hit you once or twice before you’re far enough away.

Health

Don’t expect to just sit behind a rock for a little while and get back to the action, either. Health doesn’t regenerate, not even outside of combat. And the easiest health item available — Fiber Bandages made out of Plant Fiber and Sap — doesn’t regenerate your health instantly. There’s a sub-bar that slowly increases, and you’ll only get the health if you don’t get hit before it fills up.

There are potions that can be made that will give you more health and have it increase instantly, and some food will also increase health. And with the cooking station you can create meals that gives quite a bit of health and will cause it to regenerate for a short while. But those, of course, take more resources which takes more time to go out and acquire.

Health items and other consumables also only stack to 5 (until you’ve leveled up your Axe and find a pretty rare item, which takes a while). So I’ve really been struggling to balance holding the right amount of health items, and figuring out the most efficient way to create more.

So far, just grabbing the sap and plant fiber and making a few bandages has been the most efficient solution — given that they can be created on the fly and those items are the most readily available — but there’s still a lot of complications.

If you’ve got any status effects on you, you won’t actually gain any health from the wrap because, remember, there’s a sub-bar that increases that stops as soon as you take damage. So if you’re affected, you take damage immediately, and the healing instantly stops. And given the limited stack sizes, you’re not really able to hoard the materials, either.

The carrying-capacity smoothie might be the most efficient drink that can be made. I’ve started using them more and more — they recover a decent amount of health, and do so instantly. They take resources that are slightly more difficult to gather, though, than the wraps. And you can’t simply make them from your crafting menu — you have to make them at a specific Smoothie Station.

Sleep does regenerate health, too, but you can’t sleep whenever you want. The kids have to be “tired enough”. And it doesn’t regenerate all of your health. So health management is definitely an important aspect of this game.

Truthfully, given such small stack sizes, the lack of fast travel, and the complicated nature of finding a lot of the materials needed for health, I have no idea what the developers of the game intend for you to do to survive on long treks through the park.

You essentially have to use half of your inventory slots simply being prepared — needing food, torches, enough health items to survive a few tough encounters, and potentially a backup weapon (so you can both see and fight when necessary) can leave you with very few slots for gathering resources in a hurry.

Maybe I was supposed to make more bases instead of constantly trekking back to the same one. But, man, a lot of times it felt like there were decisions made to simply extend the required playtime arbitrarily.

Getting Stronger

Of course, there are ways to improve your strength and defense, and a surprising amount of playstyles to choose from. It’s actually quite deep. Each type of armor (type being the kind of bug used to make it) corresponds to a different combat style. And there’s three armor slots, so you can equip one of each of the same type of armor; which will give you an additional bonus.

So for example, equipping the Bee Facemask, Bee Shoulder Pads, and Bee Shinguards — which all give the Ranger bonus for archery — you not only get a speed increase when drawing an arrow, but your arrows can also release a pollen cloud that slows enemies.

While I went into the game not expecting much, I was pleasantly (and frustratingly) surprised with the combat. There were times I wanted to throw my controller through the TV, but isn’t that the mark of a solid experience? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that since you play as teenagers, and the graphics are a little on the cartoony side, that this is a simple, casual game. Like I did.

Some Mild Complaints…

An ongoing gripe with this game is inventory management. Resources only stack to 10, and consumables to 5 — and that’s only non-expiring consumables. All food (raw and cooked) can spoil, so they’re each on an individual countdown… Which means they each take up their own slot. Again, there’s no real way to hoard the items you need for long treks.

Granted there are upgrades to increase these amounts, but not by much; and not until several several hours into the game. If you’re the type loot every enemy and hoard every item (like me), well:

Constantly making the trek back to wherever your base is just to drop off items gets incredibly tedious. And there’s no fast travel, so everything is that much more frustrating.

Nights are especially brutal because they’re so freaking dark. You can’t see anything. There’s torches available, but you have to constantly make them — they burn out pretty fast (and use some of the same resources needed for health wraps…).

After about a-month-and-a-half in-game time, I was able to acquire a piece of coal which creates a much longer-lasting torch. Which is nice. But it’s taken forever to get. And all of the torches require an empty hand in order to hold; which means if you want to fight at night or in the dark — you’d better be using a one-handed weapon.

Technically, there is some-sort of fast travel. There’s Futurama-style tubes that can take you from one place to another.

Unfortunately, though, I’ve only found one such tube, and it took me someplace I didn’t need to be at the time (and, actually, couldn’t leave if I wanted to).

I haven’t found a way to more-instantly get across the map in a meaningful way — where you end up closer to where you actually want to be.

And most of them aren’t. Almost all of the weapons use both hands, so, so far, I’ve been running a couple weapons simultaneously.

I wanted to primarily be an archer, but I made sure to keep my spear leveled up because I knew I’d have to use it anytime I needed light at the same time. Even Candy Staves are two-handed, so I’ve been having to keep it up. At this point, spears are essentially my primary playstyle (again).

Hopefully there’s some sort of hip-mounted light source that we can unlock so that I can main pretty much any weapon. But until then, I’m making due.

You Mentioned Planks and Logs Earlier?

Something I’ve always loved in video games is the building and creating aspect. I remember copy and pasting ROSEBUD a hundred times, so I could build a megamansion and furnish it with the most expensive items in The SIMS. I’ve also grown to appreciate earning the ability to build a massive home, too, which is why I was so proud of my Minecraft builds.

*Yes, there’s a creative mode in this game, too, if you just want to build to your heart’s content.

Given the harvesting and resource-gathering aspect of Grounded 2, naturally, there’s construction. There’s floors, roofs, wall panels and more. I was actually impressed with the variety available. While there’s only a couple of materials; there’s a ton of variations on each item, so you can really let your imagination run wild.

There are two different sizes of each “Triangle Wall” and “Triangle Floor” for example. So if you want to make architecturally interesting designs, there are options here.

So far, I’ve only really tested out the building mechanics, so my house is pretty boring. I just went with a two-wall-high rectangle, with a second floor and a sloped roof. Seeing all of the options while building that, though, has given me some ideas. We’ll see if I end up bringing them to life (maybe in Creative mode*).

Build Mechanics

Rather than needing the items in your inventory (or in storage nearby) to begin the building process; you’re able to put a “ghost” of the item in the spot you want to place it. Then you’re able to come back and add the materials as you acquire them. It’s nice, because you can get a feel for what you’re trying to do before actually committing. And you’ll be able to see if your idea is even viable before wasting resources.

That said, occasionally I did wish I could build the items instantly. Namely floors and stairs, so I could get higher more easily to build more levels and the roof. Ceilings and roofs need to be supported as well — and you can’t even place the outline if they aren’t (an outline can be supported by another outline, which is good). So shaping substantial structures takes a bit of additional creativity to even plan. And you may find yourself building section-by-section.

I also need to keep experimenting with the building mechanics. I decided to start with building the floor (obviously), but I started with the lowest elevation in the area. So, a lot of the floor pieces ended up, visually, underground. They clipped through in order to attach to the other floor pieces. The ground floor of my house looks like a crawlspace under a trailer. I don’t love it.

I want to try building a new house, this time starting at the highest elevation in the area. But I feel like the house would look like it was floating or cantilevered at that point; which I don’t think I want. The best-case scenario, which I need to figure out, would be Palworld-style where the bottom level creates a “foundation” to the ground, so it’s not just floating, and it makes sense visually. Again, it’s something I need to test. Again, maybe in creative mode.

Time to Buzz Off!

Overall, I’ve had a surprising amount of fun playing Grounded 2. It’s still in Game Preview mode, and it shows in a lot of ways. But running around as a three-inch person, and experiencing this perspective has been incredibly interesting. And despite it’s somewhat cartoonish appearance, it can really give you a challenge (and a scare if bugs already freak you out).

I’ve still got some work to do in order to re-grow myself, and I can’t wait to dive back in. Just don’t ask me to play in VR.

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