Tiny teens, BIG trouble
Being a teen is tough: roasting what meat you can scavenge before it spoils, gently harvesting dew to slake your thirst, and avoiding the glassy-eyed stare of the backyard’s many apex predators.
Oh, yeah, did we forget to mention the teens in our oddly specific sample have been shrunk to the size of ants?
In this survival game, you play as one of four formerly normal-sized youths – Willow, Max, Pete, and your girl Hoops – desperate to get back to more normal teen troubles. Maybe we’re dating ourselves with these film comparisons, but think A Bug’s Life meets The Borrowers by way of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. There are mundane objects made whimsical due to a simple shift in perspective, wacky science shenanigans, and super-sized bugs aplenty.
FUN SIZED
Speaking of those, sometimes seeing one sickly little house spider scurrying
about is enough to ruin our day in real life, and we know we aren’t alone. As there are an awful lot of the eightlegged freaks threatening to trample you and your pals, Grounded offers a unique option for those who cannot abide these creepy crawlies: arachnophobia safe mode. Rather than entirely removing these pests from the game – along with the potential therapeutic benefits of splatting ’em – this slider changes their appearance. The higher you set
the slider, the more abstract they become, removing those awful legs and mandibles until they’re little more than a kind of cute collection of fuzzy spheres… though we cannot stress enough this makes them no less deadly.
But through crafting weapons and unlocking mutations (wacky science shenanigans, remember?), you can become just as deadly. Mind you, even with only a wee pebblet axe to your name you can become a force to be reckoned with if you learn the attack patterns of the critters around you and master the art of the perfect block. Maybe one day you’ll be crafty enough to confront the real evil that lurks in the depths of the garden pond and live to tell the tale…
IMPRESSIONS
‘Immersive’ is absolutely the word for this survival game. Lushly realised with just the right amount of whimsy and danger – though the spiders can do one.