Obsidian Entertainment’s new survival game Grounded reached one million players just two days after its debut on Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Pass this week. Grounded is the first Xbox console exclusive from Obsidian following its acquisition by Microsoft in 2018.
Grounded puts players in a race for survival with one huge - or maybe tiny - twist: Everyone is shrunk down to insect size and the game’s entire world is an average back yard. The Honey I Shrunk the Kids-inspired premise means players have to contend with competition from relatively gigantic beasts like ants and spiders. Knowing that that might be enough to turn some people away from the game entirely, Obsidian included an Arachnophobia Safe Mode, which turns spiders into floating blobs that may be less freaky to look at, but are still terrifying in their own way.
As soon as Grounded launched, it was clear that it was already winning over players. On the first day it was available, Grounded was Steam’s global best seller and for a time was the second most watched game on Twitch. That success led to an incredible amount of players discovering the game in the first two days, with Grounded’s Twitter account announcing that 1 million people played the game in the first 48 hours after it launched. The announcement included a short video of Grounded director Adam Brennecke thanking fans and revealing that the game will be getting monthly updates starting in August.
Grounded is a major outlier for Obsidian, which is mainly known for its single-player, usually massive in scale RPGs. The studio is responsible for beloved titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout New Vegas, and Pillars of Eternity. Its last game, The Outer Worlds, came out after the studio was acquired by Microsoft, but still saw a multi-platform release and was a shorter game than most of its previous releases. Obsidian looks to be going back to the style of massive games it’s known for with its next game, Avowed, an Xbox exclusive open world RPG that takes place in the Pillars of Eternity universe but looks like it will play a lot more like Skyrim - and be even bigger than Bethesda’s gigantic hit.
Obsidian went out on a limb with Grounded, but it looks like its daring is already paying off. Hitting one million players in its first two days is an incredible feat and Obsidian seems ready to keep the game growing until its full release.
Grounded is available now on Steam Early Access for PC and Xbox Game Pass for Xbox One.
Source: Grounded/Twitter
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August 01, 2020 at 05:21AM
