Initial Feedback after 4-ish hours

[Gatchones]

I have been playing the game for quite a while now and I have been having a lot of fun. It is perceptible though that the game seems to lack or fail to properly accomplish in some parts, in which I share here.

 

Graphics

Grounded is a really beautiful game, it looks very good and the art style is stunning. However, the blur/bokeh effect on far away objects and backgrounds is extremely strong and is quite weird. It looks choppy in a lot of places which give this weird sharp look in the middle of the blurred effect, which kinda opposes the main objective of having one in the first place. It looks way too blurred. This could be very easily solved by either having a blur option in-game that diminishes the amount of blur in backgrounds or by just tuning it down overall.

 

Gameplay/Ease of Use

After 4 hours playing, i have noticed the game sometimes fail to be direct straight to the point with most of the objectives. They are extremely vague. "Build a pebblet axe" "Build this" "Go to this place"; It's almost always within those lines and it's very easy to get lost in the middle of everything. For the "go to" missions, I'd be nice to have a mission marker showing where to go or at least an approximate place, for example.

The Field Station feels weirdly left out and barely even mentioned in the game. The Pebblet Axe mission never mentions that you need to research stuff in order to craft it and that ends up by making players confused on how to progress, since there is no mention of it in most missions in which requires something to be researched in the first place (Pebblet Axe included)

 

The map is very vague. It gives a very basic layout of everything, but has no decent path to anything. The markers on the map are quite vague. It would be nice if you could set a waypoint in the map in which it would place a marker in the player's screen so they could more easily follow where to get to.

The tutorials are also really vague. I believe the first 5/10 minutes of the game should be used for teaching the player the basic parts of the game more in depth. "Find clean water"; "Drink water" aren't really very helpful. Laying out that there are two kinds of water (muddy; clean) and where to exactly find them would be nice. Where to find good initially, how to save/set respawn points (and not just have a mission asking to craft a Lean-On); and most importantly: teaching how and why you should use the field stations and how there are multiple ones spread across the map. It would be amazing to have these laid out for the player.

Bugs

There are quite some bugs in the game. Apart from ants, ladybugs, spiders and much more, there are some few glitches that i have encountered.

Insects seem to constantly glitch through buildings, especially when they are furious and trying to attack the player. A ladybug has clipped through the Field Station trying to attack me multiple times and sucesfully did, even though there is no way it could've fit through the Field Station's entrance.

There also seems to be something off with either the player's or big spider's hitboxes. While running away or hiding inside Field Stations, I've been attacked and even killed multiple times through walls by spiders, which have no way to enter and shouldn't be able to attack me through the walls (but did it anyways). 

The A.I in the game seems off sometimes too. Sometimes insects will get stuck behind walls, plants and etc trying to chase after the player.

Apart from those, the game is extremely enjoyable and fun. I hope to see the game develop further and allow us much more. The concept is amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2020 by Gatchones

[SnickerSnack]

I appreciate that you took so much time in crafting your post. I am only a fellow player, like you, so my opinion does not necessarily agree with the development team. I feel like most of the points you are dissatisfied with are there by design, or are simply not polished yet due to the game being in early access. 

This is a survival/crafting game (although there are also strong elements of RPG). Part of the design of survival/crafting games is to allow the player to discover how to do things. If everything is given in advance as instructional tutorials, then it takes away the process of discovery. So what you are asking for is not typical for a game in this genre. A well designed survival game should instruct the player on what controls to use, but should not instruct them in what scenarios to use those controls for. That allows players to enjoy the thrill and satisfaction of experiencing the world in a similar way as their avatar would if the game were reality - of not knowing exactly what to do and having to figure it out. 

If that isn't to your liking, and you would prefer to know exactly what to do and where to do it, then I would suggest watching YouTube videos of other people playing the game so that you can learn from their experience. There are several "Let's Play" videos out there for Grounded.