It's been almost a year since the Early Access release of Grounded, Obsidian's Honey I Shrunk the Kids-style survival game, and since then the developer has kept up a monthly cadence of content releases. In an update posted today, however, the studio said it's proving difficult to maintain that pace, and so it's going to shift to larger but less frequent updates in the future.
"We are approaching the one-year mark from the Game Preview/Early Access launch and we still have so much that we want to do for the game," Obsidian said. "Some of these larger features take time, and with a small team it's difficult to release content every month while balancing larger tasks that need to get done to finish the game."
"We will be looking at doing larger and slightly less frequent updates moving forward, which will allow us to make our updates more meaningful with more and better content. Our goal is to find the right balance of keeping the game fresh with new things while giving the team enough time to make quality features."
The change means that the expected May update will not be released: Instead, developers will continue to work on the 0.10.0 update, which is now targeted for the end of June. It will be one of the biggest Grounded updates yet, and will include the addition of new building pieces including more curved walls, roof variations, and pillars, the ability to flip some building pieces, giant food item changes, and improvements to that photo mode. More, and more impactful, stuff is also apparently on the way: Obsidian described this as "a small preview of what's coming in June" and said it doesn't want to "spoil the big stuff."
"As always your feedback in this process is critical as we figure out a good release cadence as we continue on the path towards our 1.0 launch," Obsidian said. If you'd like to contribute to that conversation, you can do so on the Grounded Discord server.
