Obsidian Entertainment has big ambitions for Grounded 2's small world

Obsidian Entertainment has been an incredibly versatile game developer over the years, even venturing outside its RPG comfort zone with the original Grounded. As a survival adventure game where you're shrunken down and explore the hidden, vast world of a backyard, it became a well-loved hit, and it evolved even further throughout its early access period. But now, the developers have big plans for Grounded 2, which has new features and a larger scope that was too big for the original to contain.

Shortly after the reveal during the recent Xbox Games Showcase alongside Summer Game Fest 2025, I got to play the opening of the sequel, which sees the familiar crew of teenage scavengers, now a little older and wiser, shrunken down once again to survive a new small world hidden in the town's park. Even as a new iteration of a familiar premise, which is essentially the survival gameplay of Rust by way of the whimsical Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Gr...