Keystone Records

PS5 player here, offering insight after 8 hours of gameplay. Before giving critical feedback, I want to praise the developers for staying true to what made Grounded so special. Instead of trying to switch up the formula, they've innovated in brilliantly natural ways. For reference, I have 200 hours in Grounded with all achievements. The Good In particular, I'm very impressed by the new features of the Omni-Tool, Buggies, and fast travel. Movement and combat feel (mostly*) improved (the new spin on daggers are fun, and the staves are awesome). Grounded 1 at times felt torn between wanting to be a co-op game, and yet still feel balanced and fun in solo. IMO, Grounded 2 instead feeds into both playstyles. For example: in solo mode, the mutation to revive quicker is actually relevant for your buggies; in co-op, I imagine it's easier (and more interesting) to steal eggs, as one player could haul it while another defends the convoy. Speaking of co-op, props for setting Friendly Fire to "off" as the default for Medium. The not-as-Good Below are a list of suggestions/requests. I strongly believe these are all needed in the game, as they will help gameplay flow and alleviate possible frustrations. If i happen to be incorrect on any of the following (i.e., there's actually a solution I'm not aware of), please let me know. • *Need to be able to continue moving whilst in the radial menu. Crucial for combat, parity with Grounded 1. Also, there seems to only be 1 radial, instead of a set of 3 that can be cycled through, allowing for only 8 hotkeys max. • Doesn't seem to be an option to keybind your mutation loadout radial, making it much harder/riskier to change loadouts once in combat. • Would really appreciate an option to set a default mode for your buggies upon dismount: to automatically start following, or to stay put (as opposed to only the latter every time). • Lastly for the options, it would be great to have intensity sliders for Vibration, Camera Shake, Head Bob, etc., as opposed to only a binary toggle on/off. Or at the very least, a low/medium/high like for Depth of Field blur. • Within the crafting menus, cursoring up from the top of the list instantly prompts the Search command. I believe the intuitive response from cursoring up, would instead be to instantly go to the bottom of the page. Perhaps going up once could highlight the Search bar (following up with a Confirm button could initiate Search), and then going up once more from there takes you to the bottom? • Finally, as far as pace of progression is concerned: it took me about 6 hours to find Blueberries (for the first Omni-Tool axe upgrade, which indirectly gatekeeps all other upgrades). Personally I like the approach of needing one tool upgrade to access the materials needed for another, but I found Lingonberries way before Blueberries, which was a bit of a feels bad. Resource distribution seems good overall, I just think there ought to be 1-2 other places to find Blueberries--ideally also a bit closer to the Snackbar, as I could honestly see a large chunk of the playerbase getting stuck on progression in this way. Thank you for your time. Please take my feedback into consideration. Absolutely incredible game, and I can't wait to see it get even better.