Obsidian will be shaking up its early access strategy for the release of Grounded 2 next month. Rather than the monthly micro-updates that were the norm when Grounded launched, the developer has decided that something more like every four to five months will be the norm.
In an interview with GamesRadar, Grounded 2 game director Chris Parker laid out the studio’s thinking.
“When we started with Grounded 1 in early access, we were trying to do almost monthly updates. That was a hassle and it didn’t work. It didn’t make the community happy and it didn’t make the team happy. So we are looking at longer, meatier updates that are in the four to five month range,” he said.
It’ll more directly mimic what Obsidian’s strategy was later on in the first Grounded’s early access development cycle, “where the team was getting out a huge chunk of whatever area of the yard, with all-new creatures, armor, new equipment, new mechanics, or whatever it might have been,” said Parker.
Grounded 2 will also include more of a storyline to follow, he noted. The team wants to preserve the fun survival-build experience of the first game but at the same time wants there to be some “narrative flair” to follow along with. That shouldn’t be impossible, I expect, given that Obsidian is much better known for making heavily story-driven roleplaying games rather than survival craft sandboxes.
You can find more about Grounded 2 on our page for that, which is conveniently called everything we know about Grounded 2.