Story Progression / Flow and other thoughts during first playthrough

[Manuela]

(playing on Gamepass / Single Player)

Hey there,

first let me join in and congratulate you to this great game!

I am currently on my first playthrough and after hours and hours of building, zick-zack ziplining through the whole garden and slowly progressing through the story - I did already see one ending, but loaded an earlier save afterwards as I felt I wasn't "done" yet.  I have no idea (even though I googled a lot of things) if it's the good or bad ending and I don't want to know.  (my ending - Wendell a raisin loved by his ex wife Oo; everyone back and all sunshine - apart from the garden, as I stuffed the chewing gum into the hole on the weed killer!)

However, I did not know there was a bomb to help through the - for me - very - very(!) difficult JavaMatic Event (Only did the Hedge MixR yet) Something I only know because of the fan wiki. Same for the bosses like Hedge Broodmother etc.

I felt the story came very abruptly to it's end - right before the JavaMatic Event. There was no real interaction with Wendell about his story (apart from the few ui lines you can choose from after JavaMatic and before using the SPAC.R. A few ORCs attacked but that was about it. (Can I actually do something now with those devices they drop, as I didn't get any option to build anything with it - although the tooltip says something different)

It was going from one battle (Mant) right into the next (JavaMatic). And then .. well ... when you stay you get a few attacks here and there from ORCs and Wendell states something like that there are signs of Schmector all over the garden. I assume he doesn't mean the reports and tapes we collected before. I went all over the place, to see if there was anything triggering a quest of some sort - but sadly nothing. 
So here I am -  standing in the garden - knowing where Schmector is (and gladly only got to around 40% on my fight) - haven't defeated any black widow (so no item progression as I need the moss) , nor the Mantis - wondering where the story went to guide me. 
Reading through boss battle strategies it seems that some do Schmector before Mantis. Schmector is called the final boss -> but this ominous bomb is for the JavaMatic Event.  I think some kind of ingame story flow would be good. The "endgame" feels rushed - story wise.
Without any third party websites I would have probably missed a good portion of what the game has to offer and where many creative people worked on. Instead of nerfing weapons or armor I would prefer more storytelling or in my case any. 
Grinding through the garden to build either the same weapon to apply a different candy or build a different weapon just because the one I was using is ... suddenly blunt ... is not as exciting for me as a well done story progression, which leads me either through quests or breadcrumps to bosses plus some story. 
I only know Wendell is obsessed with Billy Hog as this is a sentence he repeats very often (plus evrything's looking good from here). 

What is not rushed is the need to grind my way through the game. Something I don't usually enjoy, however, as the story progresses, it is quite fun, up to a certain extend. I think drop rates,  resources respawn (!) and the like are handled in enough seperate threads. 

The chewing gum weed killer thing. I was quite surprised to see the change it brought - Oak Tree entrance guarded by an infected wolf spider, something happend down in the red anthill - dunno what - it's too scary to go there (^^) - no more resource farming there.  I had to extend my cosy little hut on top of the Armed Raspberry Punch-O to a fortress, still the wolf spider decided it could jump on top. Killed it when it bugged on another occasion (still T2 as I couldn't reach Burg.L). It wasn't possible to revert back and the whole lot is respawning with joy, so it seems to be nothing I can fight off - quite the contrary. Maybe give players a small hint as what to expect or ask to create a new safe file before the cutscene?

Something I would suggest for Grounded is "easy" modding support. Grounded has a small but very nice and dedicated modding community and I feel the community and the game could both benefit from dev supported modding. It does not matter, that the game just got released or there's an update soon, with more customization options - people love to get creative in the garden you created and in the long run early support for modding can be very beneficial.  

Thanks again - the game is great, has a great atmosphere ( the light within the broodmother lair was awesome and sent shivers down my spine) - this includes a great music soundtrack and sound effects(!) and gets very scary at times (got startled when I tried to fight the black widow in the undershed and dropped my bombs instead of throwing - like a pro ;o) )

Best regards
Manuela