SpidersBane2022

First off, I'm not saying make Grounded a straight up horror game. What I'm proposing are just some minor, vague ideas going forward to give it little hints of horror. It's already got some like the ****roach losing its head and coming back to life, and the praying mantis waiting in ambush to jump on you from above, or the scorpions bursting out of the ground. I love these little tastes of horror which make you a little uneasy or cautious while exploring. So going forward, I think they should keep adding little stuff like that, gimicks that are specific to certain bugs. Maybe there's a bug that actively stalks you while you're within its spawn area. I know the franchise already has a lot of spiders, but a trapdoor spider would be great for this. Have it be a bug that lives in isolated and specific areas, maybe have something on the ground to show where a hole is, but not too obvious so that people still have to be careful exploring certain areas of the map. Some of my favorite memories are when Grounded has felt unsettling, and I think bugs with a horror-esque gimmick would be fun and also realistic because being shrunk down would definitely be a bit of a horror show and some bugs are pretty vicious hunters.

This is just a small suggestion for the way the mantis operates that I think would make it even better. I love how the devs have captured the ambush predator feel by having them perch on a leaf and sit there until you pass under them. Even if you use the scanner to try to find where they are on the map, once you get to the area, you still gotta find it. And they camouflage so well into the environment sometimes that it can feel genuinely unnerving because you know there's one in the area, but you just can't seem to find it, and you're trying to be careful not to get jumped on. It's a great bit of tension that can almost make you feel like you're being hunted. One small thing is that they only seem to perch on one specific kind of flower, which, once you recognize it, makes it a bit easier to watch out for them. So my small suggestion is to make it so that they can perch on other kinds of plants too instead of just one specific one, so that way you can preserve that uneasy atmosphere that comes with trying to hunt a praying mantis for parts because it could be anywhere. Maybe still have them stay in a designated spawn area like they are, but expand the kinds of plants they can perch on so like if there's a milkweed in their spawn area, they might be hiding on the bottom of one of those leaves, or something.