Actually, wait, the pond does sound quite dangerous. “This boss of the pond might only have one good eye, but it only needs one eye to notice you, and you never, ever, want it to notice you,” the devs say of that chonking great koi. So, uh, maybe avoid that one, then. Probably avoid the new diving bell spiders, too. Obsidian tease that these were added so that players can no longer use water to escape the game’s eight-legged beasts. There are some nice new creatures, though. Cute little tadpoles and water boatmen will mind their own business. To them, you are the apex predator - tadpoles can be eaten and boatmen can be murdered to make flippers from their fins. Grounded is darker than I remember.
The Grounded team took this patch as a chance to update players on what to expect from the game in the future as well. “Moving forward, the team is going to be focusing on larger content releases that are more spread out,” they say. “This doesn’t mean we won’t continue our monthly updates, but the next few will be focused on areas of stability, polish, and bug fixes.” A few of these quality of life fixes include inventory changes so that tools no longer take up slots, base building improvements and “revamping how save games work”. “On the content side, flying creatures are a high-priority feature,” they add. “We feel this will be a game-changer on how you defend and build bases while adding a bunch of cool new crafting items into the mix.” They also mention they want to add new points of interest, new materials and more places to explore (like underwater caves), and we’ll see some of this in the game’s December update. For now, though, you can dive into Grounded’s koi pond update on Steam, where the game costs £25/€30/$30, and Xbox Games Pass. Bear in mind Grounded is still in early access, so you’ll probably run into a bug or two. Speaking of bugs, Sin was particularly partial to Grounded’s ants, and even had a chat with the devs about them.
