Grounded 2 Stacks Up To Be Smash Hit, Blasts Past Predecessor Mere Hours After Launch

[Cpt.Jank]

Grounded 2 only just launched to Steam Early Access, and it has already broken its predecessor's record for concurrent Steam players. According to SteamDB, Grounded 2 has already attracted an all-time peak player count of 49,836 players, and that was a mere two hours after the game went live on Steam. That's compared to the original Grounded, which peaked at 32,012 players a year after it launched in Early Access. Since the launch Grounded 2 has plateaued somewhat, settling at around the 33,000-player mark, however, the game launched at the start of the week, and player counts tend to pick up around the first weekend after launch. It would not be surprising to see more players pick up Grounded 2 on its first weekend after launch, since the first game was quite successful over its five-year run. The launch of Grounded 2 resulted in a noticeable uptick in player counts for the original survival adventure game, to boot.

Grounded 2 builds on the premise of the first game, shrinking the protagonist down even smaller than before, revisiting the base-building and exploration mechanics in a larger open world with fresh twists, like insect breeding, new threats, and new challenges. Grounded 2 currently costs $29.99, and those who have played the new game and reviewed it on Steam have been impressed for the most part. The game currently has a 73% Positive Steam review rating from a total of 1,385 reviews. Grounded 2 is still in Early Access, and it will likely be for a while—the original Grounded game only exited Early Access over two years after its initial release. The launch price also saw a $10 increase when Grounded exited Early Access, so the same may be true for the sequel.


View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[ymdhis]

I liked it back when it was called "Honey, I shrunk the kids" and had Rick Moranis in it.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Never finished playing the first one, but found it fun. Was playing it coop with my son and my younger brother, but my son lost interest after about 20 hours of game time. The game, I found to be very tedious if you played on the default difficulty settings.....constantly having to repair weapons/armor, constantly having to eat and drink. Once you removed or greatly reduced these couple of things the game became less about micro-managing and more exploration/combat oriented and engaging.

One thing I think the first game did very well was the base construction. You could just simply layout a blueprint of what you wanted to build, how and where. Once you did that all you needed to do was collect the necessary supplies to construct whatever you were building. You didn't have to try and plan and build as you went, you could lay everything out and just construct as you obtained the necessary supplies.

I'll have to talk my brother (and maybe see if we can convince my son) to actually complete the story line.

 

[Wye]

It is an early early ... preview, the graphics engine is severely unoptimised and zero support of DLSS.

On a 4090 GPU, I had to use the lowest settings to get 60 fps, on a cartoonish looking game.

Gameplay wise, it assumes the player knows everything in Grounded 1. New players will have severe problems figuring out basic mechanics or survival like water/food.

It has tons of bugs, like respawn points not working, making you run from far away each time you die.

A dumpster fire. After 10 hours of playing I uninstalled it. Maybe I'll give it a shot in 8 years when they fully release it, if I remember.

shrinking the protagonist down even smaller than before

WTF are you smoking in your ad? They are shrunk on the same size as in Grounded 1.