Despite not having taken a survey, I feel pretty confident that nobody at PC Gamer is more afraid of spiders than I am. They petrify me – unless they manage to get on me, at which point I flail around like I’m on fire. And I’d rather be set on fire than feel a spider crawling over my skin. Given this, it’s ridiculous that I’d put myself in a situation where I had to review a game that was full of them. But for a survival game as good as Grounded, I’m willing to live through one of my worst nightmares.
Sometimes the best path to victory is cheating a little bit
Grounded is a time travel device, dragging me back to the garden where I used to spend long, sunny afternoons pretending I was in Eternia or Third Earth, collecting grass stains and scrapes. It’s a game fuelled by vibrant ’90s cartoons and movies like Honey I Shrunk the Kids, with a quartet of kidnapped, shrunken teens exploring the alien world that’s right under our noses.
It’s a whimsical survival sandbox that feels considerably more playful’s threats were few. The massive, terrifying spiders that littered the garden never wandered far and were easy to outmanoeuvre, lulling me into a false sense of security. But with every update, they became more deadly, transforming into relentless hunters searching for prey in areas I once considered sanctuaries.
