Grounded Review (Switch eShop) | Nintendo Life

Listen, if you’re of a certain vintage, one of the standout summer holiday movies of your youth will undoubtedly have been Disney’s excellent Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. Back in those terrible and endlessly cruel times we didn’t have all your fancy CGI smothering the life out of every frame, you see, or superheroes like…er…any of those weird Chris guys to entertain us. No, instead we had to make do with amazing practical effects that added texture and believability to everything, and comedic geniuses like Rick Moranis in lead roles so we were guaranteed a certain level of fun.

Yes, for us old fogies, the reveal trailer drop for Obsidian’s Grounded was a very exciting time indeed. Heart monitors were double-checked and pants were quickly changed as we were shown what looked to be a Honey I Shrunk The Kids simulator disguised as a very cool survival game. And really, having spent hours playing the Xbox version over the past year or so, we can confirm that’s exactly what you’ve got here — an incredibly immersive and atmospheric game that drops you (and up to three pals in online co-op) into a backyard full of secrets, stories, and great big bleddy spiders. There are filters for arachnophobes, do not panic.

It’s a bonafide belter, and honestly (for this particular writer, at least) it’s a bit of a headscratcher why we don’t hear more about Grounded, as it really has evolved into one of the very best games on this generation of souped-up Xbox consoles. Everyone should be playing and talking far more about brilliant and original games like this. The core survival elements of scrounging for useful supplies and building defences whilst avoiding enormous garden insects are perfectly realised, and the novelty of your giant surroundings — and maybe this is where our nostalgia kicks in — just never fails to thrill. It’s a perfect setting for a video game. The mundane and everyday made magical.

If you have yet to play Grounded, it sees you assume the role of one of four missing children during a spate of similar disappearances that have gripped a community. Of course, you and your pals haven’t gone missing at all, you’ve simply become incredibly small and, whilst your parents presumably make frantic calls to emergency services, you’re actually attempting to cross a boiling lake of fresh dog pee on a used earbud in their back garden. Ok, so that isn’t actually in the game, but it should be. Maybe something to think about for the sequel.

As you and your buddies get a grip on your embiggened surroundings, you’ll need to start out slowly by getting some water and raw mushrooms into your belly, before moving on to creating a makeshift shelter, fashioning gear and, eventually, creating bases and becoming master of all you survey, a survivalist hero parading around your garden on a spider that you’ve made your servant bride. Again, that isn’t something that Obsidian has seen fit to actually allow you to do, but we’re spit-balling here. There’s always next time, lads.

Anyway, yes, it follows the general ebb and flow of the survival genre as you’d expect in how you level up and gradually regain control, and it’s backed up by a cleverly paced and involving narrative that has you discover an intriguing trail of evidence left behind by the mysterious Dr Wendell Tully (nice Moranis character reference, bro). This gives you the drive you need to keep pushing deeper into the garden, into those deep, dark spots and spiders’ lairs, to reach your next objective and eventually, hopefully, discover why everyone is being shrunk down so miniature that they can look Tom Cruise directly the eyes. If he was in the game. Again, another missed opportunity.

With this full release occurring across multiple platforms, and with a bunch of “Fully Yoked” content updates included, Grounded is enjoying a big boost in player numbers right now too — good news for Switch owners, as this port comes complete with that all-important cross-play option, but is it a port worth bothering with? That is the question, by Yorick. Well, yes, it’s actually fine, as long as you know the score with how these big games end up looking and feeling to play for the most part on Nintendo’s platform. There are no huge surprises, the frame rate holds a fairly solid 30fps, although it can take some big old tumbles later down the road as your creations and bases get bigger, and it looks fairly janky in comparison to its next-gen counterparts. Par for the course.

Graphically, whilst the game has been drained of most of its fancy lighting, shadows, and sharp textures, its cartoonish style manages to keep it looking fairly decent. This is an adventure full of big enemies and bright colours too, so there’s no real problem with the readability of situations due to the lowered resolution. Oh, and you can adjust the text size in-game, so there’s no issues that way either. In all other ways, it pretty much looks and feels how you’d expect on Switch: kinda blurry, prone to stutters when it gets hectic, but still very playable if this is your only avenue.

However, other issues reared their heads as we delved deeper that are more egregious. We’re at the point now where the frame rate, as decent as it was early days, is beginning to become more of a problem, our ever-growing base is causing performance problems, and we’ve had zero joy in playing online thus far. Invites have been sent but never received and, as there’s no local co-op to fall back on, this is an issue that drags things down quite seriously and can’t be overlooked. You can play solo and alongside bots, if you wish — it’s okay that way, too — but the co-op aspect really is a biggy here, a core component of the game, one of its most important elements in terms of longevity. Be aware that it’s flaky at best right now.

Besides these more serious performance woes, everything else here is as you’d expect from a Switch port of this sort of big experience. Before it was announced, we would have told you it was impossible to put Grounded on Nintendo’s console and have it run in a playable state. “A fool’s errand!” we’d have screamed into your face before immediately apologising. And yet here it is, fully playable, completely intact, and looking and performing pretty much exactly as you’d expect in order to make that a possibility.

Conclusion

Grounded is a fantastic survival game, a colourful, unique, and original slice of joyful adventuring that everyone should play if they have the opportunity. It nails the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids vibe, its core gameplay loops are moreish, and its setting and enemies are often breathtaking in how they reframe the mundane. However, and as usual for these big efforts on Switch, this port has plenty of issues. They’ve had to tank the visuals, the all-important online co-op is flaky, the frame rate is fine until you start going big on bases — just all the stuff we’ve come to expect at this stage, really. If you can handle the issues, or if Switch is your only way to play, this game can still deliver the goods and the quality shines through. However, if you have another way to play it, we’d definitely recommend you do that instead.