Hi Devs,

I’ve clocked about 99.9 hours in Grounded 2 so far, and after checking out the new Playgrounds mode, I feel like there's a massive amount of untapped potential there. I wanted to share a few ideas with you:

1. Roguelike Dungeons & Playgrounds Integration

Give Playgrounds mode more tangible rewards and player motivation. I play a lot of roguelike games, and the main hook that keeps players coming back is the randomized dungeons and RNG loot.

It would be awesome if we could drop into a deep underground cave with limited gear and resources, fight our way through hordes of minions, and take down a tough boss to score random-quality gear. It would be even better if there were exclusive boss weapons we could earn and take back to our main Survival world! Healing items (like smoothies or bandages) would be the main limiting factor, forcing players to think strategically about their loadouts and buffs to conserve health.

How do we find these instances? In Survival mode, we could build a specific structure where we send out ants (or other burrowing bugs) to "scout" for these dungeons over time, scaled by loot quality or level. And it doesn’t just have to be caves—how about a massive beehive or a spider den?

How does this tie into Playgrounds? Let players build and upload these custom dungeons, and allow us to access them directly from our Survival worlds. If you added a matchmaking system so we could team up with random players to tackle these unknown player-made dungeons for loot, it would add so much more life and replayability to Grounded 2, rather than just grinding NG+ loops for gear like in the first game!

2. Expanded Bug Taming & Companion System

Mounts have their own specific perks right now, which is great, but you don't necessarily need to make every bug rideable. Instead, let them go out and scavenge!

Imagine coming back to base and seeing my massive pet Wolf Spider waiting at the door with a Mantis corpse it managed to take down, waving at me with its extra legs. I’d be thrilled and would instantly give its furry head a pat! Ants could automatically go out and chop grass while I'm away, hauling back a bunch of building materials.

Also, during faction retaliations/base raids, I want my tamed bugs to swarm out and wage all-out war against the attackers, instead of just sleeping peacefully in their fancy pet houses like the current mounts do!

Bug Eggs & Genetics: Bug eggs could have different quality tiers and random affixes. You could even tie this into the dungeon system I mentioned above—players would absolutely grind dungeons over and over for a chance at a god-tier Wolf Spider egg! I'm not sure if you guys have played the Monster Hunter Stories series, but imagine taking their randomized gene-splicing system and putting it in Grounded. Since our game is real-time action combat rather than rock-paper-scissors, building the ultimate bug companion with random genes would be incredibly deep and engaging.

Final Thoughts

This player-made dungeon idea could also save your team some dev time on hand-crafting the massive overworld. You wouldn't need to manually carve out a unique cave for every single piece of special gear. I know Grounded 2's map is going to be incredibly huge, but during my exploration, I've stumbled into some far-off corners that feel a bit weirdly desolate—no bugs, no resources, just a sense of emptiness.

That’s all the inspiration I’ve got for now! Thank you so much for bringing us such an amazing game. Even though I usually play solo and my PC specs aren't the best, I'm having an absolute blast. I would be thrilled to get a reply from you guys, and I hope the game keeps getting better and better!

My email: danciulescumariana06@gmail.com

Best regards, A passionate fan

I like your ideas regarding broadening the use of the tamed bugs.

I would definitely enjoy them gathering things. Even if the majority of the time what they brought back were common items; if every once in a while they could bring something rare that would feel pretty sweet.

I’d even be OK if certain bug types only ever picked up things that your character had dropped or started the harvest process of rather than hunting down enemies. If I decimated an entire section of grass and I had a couple tamed ants that I was not actively using as my mount; it would be pretty nice if those ants went and tried to gather some of that grass. The smaller bugs could pick up arrows or sap from the collectors.

Being able to unleash your entire tamed army of bugs would completely change the feel of raids. It’s possible it could make raids a little too easy… or it could result in your bug army being decimated. It really depends on if the developers decide to adjust the scale of the raids to match the number of participants and/or how well you can juggle defending/rescuing your comrade bugs as the need arises. And if you have upgraded your mounts, they should do better in the fight thus giving you more payoff on investing in them.