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Now done and dusted for another year, PAX Australia 2025 absolutely brought the goods. From exciting new and upcoming indie games, an avalanche of trading cards and collectibles, and everything becoming an Xbox, there was something for everyone – even an unexpected fire drill.
Amongst the chaos, we got the opportunity to sit down with creative director Justin Vazquez and game producer Taylor Kennedy to talk about all things Grounded 2; including early access, all-new environments, the addition of Buggies, and whether or not we will ever see our crazy Australian creatures feature in the game.
Early access was quite pivotal to the success of Grounded. How has your approach to EA for Grounded 2 shifted due to learnings from the first game and feedback from Grounded 2’s EA launch?
Justin: So you’re absolutely right. The success of the first Grounded was instrumental because of the early access period and the community’s involvement. So that’s definitely something that we wanted to retain going into Grounded 2. The main thing that I wouldn’t say changed, but evolved or iterated is that the process was refined so much on the first Grounded. We had this wonderful team at Obsidian dedicated to collecting the feedback from the community, interacting with the community, processing that feedback and and getting it to the dev team that it’s down to a science at this point.
And that was an instrumental because with Grounded 2, our ambition has always been to make a much bigger game, bigger scope – coming into early access, we knew that because this is a sequel, and because the expectations of early access have changed since the first Grounded, that we’d have to already come in at a much higher level of quality, content, realization, whatever you want to call it. We would have to start incorporating that feedback that we’d be getting as soon as possible. So having that team in place, having that process in place, and being able to incorporate it into our production and creative pipelines immediately because of the experience that was gained on the first Grounded has been instrumental.
Taylor: I wasn’t part of the Grounded one team, but I think the big advantage we have now is that we’re working with Eidos, which is a huge privilege. And so when that feedback does come in, we have more eyes and different levels of industry expertise kind of coming in and assessing that feedback. So it takes a village, and I think it’s really fun to be able to work with Eidos on this project, and also consult the original Grounded team at the same time.
So a bit of a follow up to that – Grounded 2 entered early access a few months ago, how has the response been for the game? Have you seen a lot of players make the leap across?
Justin: Absolutely. We were very blessed to have such a great announcement and launch, because we’re able to keep it secret, and we were able to surprise and delight that community – which is full of so many positive, lovely people who really are passionate of the game. But what was really encouraging was that a lot of OG Grounded players came back in droves, we also saw a lot of brand new players, a brand new segment, a brand new audience, who came into the Grounded world for the first time when we went to early access.
So that response, both from the core community and from a wider, more general audience, was really encouraging. It really let us know that we were on the right track, and it allowed us to get a lot of feedback that we are already starting to fold into our road map. We just had our first big update, the Hairy and Scary update which came up on September 30th; the main feature of that being Axl, giant Park Boss – it’s a giant tarantula, which in and of itself – bigger bosses, tarantulas, things like that, were part of community feedback, but we could start seeing, even in the smaller quality of life feedback that we’re already starting to address from said community.
Taylor: My intro to the Grounded community was the announcement day, and so I got to see in the chat, people going insane about the fact that there was a sequel coming up. And that amount of excitement really kind of clued me in, like, “Oh, people are REALLY into this game!”, and they’re really looking forward to seeing it kind of expanded upon. The Park being so much bigger than the Backyard was, and seeing the scope of Grounded really increase. And then I got to go to a showcase demo that we had in Los Angeles and I got to meet these really, really friendly, kind players who had put in so much time – somebody put in, like, 3000 hours or something like that? I was like, “I don’t think I’ve done that with any game I’ve ever played!”
So it was really cool to see just how dedicated people were. But I think there’s also a demographic of people who think “I haven’t even played the first one, and now there’s a second one? This game must be really good. I should probably take a look at it and give it a try.” I’m excited to kind of see the new demographical players that come in with the sequel title as well.
Based on the feedback from the EA launch of Grounded 2 so far, whats are the team’s biggest focus and priorities for the coming months?
Justin: Well, as we mentioned, we just put out our first big update Hairy and Scary, and now we’ve shifted our focus on our next big update, which is the ‘Winter’ update. And what’s really exciting about the ‘Winter’ update is it’s the first time we’re going to add new geography to the park; our first area that we released in early access, what we call the Picnic Area, was by design meant to invoke the same feeling of the first Grounded, but in a park.
So it had a very “Hey, this is just like Grounded 1, but it’s set in a park” feel, you know, we wanted to have that continuity. So it had a very similar look and feel, but all of our big landmarks, like the trash can, picnic table, the the tipped over ice cream cart, these are all things that you could find in a park more than you couldn’t in backyard.
And that was intentional. We wanted returning players to feel like “Okay, this is still ‘Grounded’, even though it’s in a new setting”, it’s still the same core fantasy, the same feel to it, and we wanted new players to – for their first experience there – have that similar core Grounded experience. But now that we’re expanding the park with the garden, this is the first time that we can really embrace, “Hey, let’s do something that can only be done in a park.”
That’s where the community garden comes in, and it gives us this really unique location that allows us to play with both the organic components of what makes a great Grounded area, – the fruits and vegetables, the pumpkin patch, all these really fun, organic things, but done in a way that’s very man made and crafted. And that’s where the park will really shine is when you get the marriage between those two two aesthetics. So we’re really focused on that and we’re really excited about that. And at the same time, we’ll introduce to you, our first new Buggy, the Ladybug.
Taylor: I think one thing I’m excited to iterate on moving forward is definitely the narrative and the lore, like a lot of what we do with Grounded 2 is collaborate with the community and players on a lot of things, and so we’re always looking for feedback. But the lore is kind of the one thing that we want to keep a secret, so that players can like investigate it and discover it on their own time. So that’s the distinctly Grounded 2 ingredient that we’re adding, and I’m kind of excited to see the reception to that as well in the future.
Just going back to the introduction of the Buggies, they add a distinct layer to progression and balance of the game. Are they performing how you expected, or have they caused issues around difficulty and balancing certain systems?
Justin: So what was really instrumental when approaching the Buggies – because we knew this is something we wanted to do from day one, it was the number one most requested feature from Grounded one – was finding that balance between fleshing out the feature enough that we can get into our players’ hands quickly and start getting feedback, but not fleshing it out so much that we’re now painted into a corner, and we can’t work with what the community’s telling us.
Because the feature has a lot of potential, we could have locked ourselves behind closed doors for years and built out everything that we want to do with Buggies, and just given that to the community, but then we miss out on what they would want, what they would react to, what they would get excited about. So we think we struck that balance pretty well, by starting off with our Red Ant Buggy and our Orb-Weaver Buggy and focusing on just the core experience around the feature. Getting that into the players’s hands and getting feedback.
There’s been a lot of very low-level feedback around balance, damage and tweaking and speed and this and that, that we will be refining; that we have been refining since the beginning of early access, and we will continue to refine throughout the life cycle of the game. But what’s nice is that at the highest levels, what the community’s telling us; “Hey, we really like this feature, and we really like to see it grow. These are the kind of Buggies we want to see, and these are the kind of features we’d love to have with the Buggies”. For us, it’s so exciting to see them get excited about that feature and to see the potential in it, the same way we do, and the most heartwarming thing is that a lot of what they’re getting excited about and that they want to see are exactly the things that we want to bring to the feature over the course of early access, as we go to our 1.0. So that feels nice, that the dev team and the community are sort of in sync with each other, especially on such an important feature.
Taylor: Buggies are obviously a key focus of the sequel. So, yeah, we’re constantly talking about progression; refining those systems and making sure that we get them right, but the benefit of early access is we don’t have to make things very perfect on the first try, so that’s where the community comes in.
With an emphasis on community input, how have features changed or evolved based on feedback? Have you introduced features you weren’t expecting to introduce, or is there anything that has changed significantly based on that community feedback?
Justin: As I mentioned before, what’s been really heartening is that a lot of the feedback we’re getting is very much in line with where we wanted to take the game. There were always some ideas that come out of left field or that we weren’t expecting, and what’s nice is that we have that opportunity to look over them, try to understand them, and identify ways that we could potentially integrate that into our roadmap. What’s really nice is sometimes a feature that we think is cool and put in the game, really takes off in the eyes of the players; they get excited, they give us feedback, and we have to be agile enough to go to spot that and realise there’s an opportunity here.
A good example is, we have this character in the game called the Mysterious Stranger and we really wanted her to have this omnipresent feel across the whole park. And part of that was she can communicate to you via your Scabby, and she’s got this army of orc insects that could attack you anywhere. And then one of our designers just pitched this idea of like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you can find versions of the weapons that were clearly made by her, everywhere in the map, and they’ll be special versions of the weapons with little perks, and that way it makes it feel like she’s playing the game too, and you’re kind of chasing her around” and we’re like, yeah, that’s a cool idea, let’s put that in the game.
What’s been amazing is the community has really latched onto these, both from the narrative lore point of view and from the game meta point of view of like, these are the best versions of these weapons. So you gotta go out and you gotta find them, and they’re in the map and this is where they are – and seeing the community get so excited about this quick idea that somebody had, and that we all kind of rallied behind and found ways to make it happen. And now they’re saying, we want more, we want it to be a system, we want there to be depth to this thing. That’s great, it’s super exciting that everyone is so into this.
So now that gives us the opportunity to go like, okay, well, we weren’t foreseeing time and energy being put into this, but is there something else we can maybe de-prioritize to make this happen so that the community can then say “We did this, we pushed for this because we love this and we want some more of it.”
Taylor: Yeah. It’s a joy, like being able to go with our community manager, go through all of the suggestions that we get in our Discord; some of them are hilarious, some of them are super creative. and it’s every week we meet and we sit down – you literally go one by one, line item by line item. And that’s like the first time I’ve done something like that in my career in games where we’re really sitting and going line by line, asking what do the fans want?
And obviously there’s things that a ton of people are uploading and it seems like, okay you should really pay attention to this, and then every so often there’s something that doesn’t have a ton of upvotes, but it seems like super fun to implement. We talk about it for a very long time, so the process itself of working with the community is really enjoyable.
Game streaming has been a thing for quite a while now, but do you feel the introduction of handhelds like the ROG Ally X and the Steam Deck present any unique opportunities for you, where typically ‘play at home’ games have the ability to capture a more mobile audience?
Taylor: Based on my conversations with Justin and the rest of the team, we’re always trying to put the game into as many players’ hands as possible. So it’s something that we talk about very often, making sure that we can make this game something that everyone can enjoy and in as many ways as possible.
A lot of people like to play Grounded with their kids, for example. So finding ways to make that accessible for people is something we would definitely want to do, but we’re still kind of investigating what makes the most sense, what and how – that sort of thing is an ongoing conversation.
Justin: Yeah, right now, we’re really focused on our lead platforms, Xbox and Steam and PC, and making the best experience there – but yes, Taylor nailed it – we really want to make sure that we can get this game into as many people’s hands as possible, the way that they want to play it. And so we’re always investigating those opportunities.
Obviously we don’t want too much to be spoiled, but can you give us a hint of features, systems or content that players can look forward to over the coming months?
Taylor: We do have an outward facing player roadmap and we’re going to iterate on that as we move forward in time, so that’ll always have the most up to date information, what we’re planning, what we’re working on, and what we want to share. On our road map, there are some things that are scratched out, that are kind of like secrets and surprises for later, but they may become revealed later down the line. So it’s kind of fun to share little tidbits and like hear fan theories along the way.
Justin: Coming up in our winter update with the Garden, like I mentioned before, we have the Ladybug Buggy, which I think is really exciting for us because it’s one of the most requested Buggies from the community. I think everybody in the first Grounded at some point jumped on a Ladybug and let it carry you around and hoped for mounts one day in the game. So you’d like to joke that she’s the original Buggy prototype, and so to finally bring that to life and getting that into player’s hands is going to be really exciting for us.
And then even in our summer update…
Yeah, we flip the seasons!
Justin: (laughing) That’s right! In our summer update down the line, and this is already on the road map, we’re going to be revisiting being able to swim – and that’s a big feature and a big part of the experience from Grounded 1. And we know that something that the fans want to see again and see how we’re going to improve that, the way we’ve improve the other mechanics, the other core mechanics in Grounded 2.
Is there anything you’d love to put out there, for any fans of the first game who haven’t yet made the jump across to Grounded 2, to get them to jump on board?
Justin: Well, I think now’s a great time to jump on board, because as we mentioned, we just released our Hairy and Scary update; and so Axl the tarantula, our first big Park Boss, is such a unique and interesting experience that takes that core backyard boss experience from Grounded 1 and takes it to the next level. Because now you can ride Buggies, it means that big, huge boss fights need to be scaled proportionately.
You’re not just the teen anymore, you’re the teen on an insect, and so what doess a big giant scary monster look like now? For us at the team it had to be the tarantula out of the gate; spiders are such an iconic part of Grounded, then we really need to raise that bar. And I think the team did an amazing job of delivering that fantasy of you know that creature feature, giant monster battle with Axl that, I know returning players on Grounded are gonna get a huge kick out of this. So now’s the perfect time to jump it.
Taylor: I think a highlight for me is being able to see the teens grow up a bit, and it’s kind of fun to get in early on that and seeing them all age up – the immediate difference in maturity level between the first and second game. I think it’s super fun to hear all their new voice lines and and how they’re kind of re-entering this traumatic situation for the second time. It’s super entertaining. So for anyone who felt an attachment to the teens or the kids in the first one, this is a well written expansion of that – the Eidos narrative team really knocked it out of the park with this, so that would be my selling point.
Well we hope you get to enjoy your time here at PAX and here in Australia, we’re eagerly looking forward to the coming updates for Grounded 2 – and perhaps you’ll take inspiration from the many Australian creatures that exist as well.
Justin: We were just talking about that at lunch. There’s so many people from the Grounded community are like “The next one should be sent in Australia.” And we’re just like, I’m sure there’s a pet store somewhere in Brookhollow with some Australian critters and they got loose. We could do that.
