Assessing Grounded 2 in a world in which the original exists is tricky. Grounded went 1.0 in 2022 and enjoyed many updates both before and after that milestone. Because of the sequel’s changes to some of the game’s foundational elements, I won’t be at all surprised if Grounded 2 is eventually a much better game. Some of those changes already make it difficult to return to the first game. However, the sequel is also without some of the original’s essential features for now, too, meaning this game about shrunken heroes needs more time to grow bigger and better than the original.

Grounded 2 wastes no time getting its band of adolescent heroes shrunk back down to the size of insects, opening with a hurried, “Oops, I did it again” kind of story beat. Max, Willow, Hoops, and Pete are slightly older and a little more vulgar in their teen years, but once more find themselves fighting to survive in the wilderness of a world where bugs don’t just sting or bite; they aim to kill.

Though Grounded 2 does occasionally play like a horror game, such as when you’re traveling at night without a torch and the glowing eyes of a scorpion or wolf spider suddenly stalk your path ahead, its best trait is one it naturally carries over from the first game: its childlike spirit. Whereas so many survival-crafting games are bleak, sometimes grueling affairs telling thematically dark tales with muted color palettes, Grounded’s world is vibrant and silly, colorful and whimsical, and that’s a difference I truly adore. The sun-soaked Brookhaven Park gives you a whole new world to explore, decorated with a familiar sense of exploration.

Scaling a trash can or picnic table isn’t unlike climbing a mountain in Skyrim or traversing a new planet in No Man’s Sky, with a great number of environmental obstacles defining your travels. Fighting or fleeing mosquitoes, roaches, and the new (and intimidating) praying mantis isn’t unlike taking on a horde of infected in DayZ, where you’re best left trying to isolate them, picking them off one at a time so you’re not overwhelmed. The structure of so many other games like it can be seen in Grounded 2, but it stands out from this pack thanks to its ’90s-kid outer layer that drapes over the difficult, sometimes even intense, survival game.

Though the game can still be quite tough–especially for solo players–if you’re not upgrading things like armor and weapons at the rate the game casually tells you to, Grounded 2 makes a pair of mechanical changes that result in a much more enjoyable, easier experience than the original game. One of those changes is the omni-tool. The original Grounded asked players to craft things like a shovel, axe, and hammer separately, and each of those had their own upgrades, allowing them to interact with higher-tier objects in their world. For example, a Level-1 axe could cut grass, but you’d need a Level 2 axe to cut some sturdy weeds if you wanted their stems, which are helpful for building certain structures.

Grounded 2 streamlines your toolset by folding these once-individualized tools into the omni-tool; an all-in-one handheld contraption that changes its behavior based on the context you use it in. If you need to dig up grubs to use their hides for a recipe, it’s a shovel; if you’re cutting grass to build walls or a roof, it’s an axe, and so on. It also has a repair function, so you can mend things that have taken damage, like when waves of bugs might descend on your modest home and trash your spike traps laid outside your front door.

The omni-tool doesn’t degrade over time like the first game’s tools did, so you don’t need to worry about crafting a replacement or restoring its durability. You can’t even drop it, which prevents you from ever misplacing it, thankfully. If that all seems too simplified, you still have to upgrade it several times over for each tool, and those upgrades usually require crafting parts that are difficult to obtain or not likely to even be encountered early on.

This one change streamlines so much of the gameplay loop that when I went back to Grounded to remind myself of the difference, it became clear that the omni-tool represents a much more satisfying system. Similarly impactful is the addition of buggies: tamed bugs you can ride, each with their own abilities. In the current version of Grounded 2, there are two kinds of buggies: the red soldier ant and the orb weaver spider. Through somewhat lengthy processes that send you dungeon-crawling in anthills and spiders’ nests, you’ll pilfer eggs from the beasts, build hatcheries back at your base, then hatch tamed buggy versions of the insects you can call your own.

These buggies revolutionize so much of the Grounded experience. Riding a red ant buggy is much faster than walking, and much safer too, as any damage that’s inflicted on you is first absorbed by the buggy while you’re riding them. They can vacuum up nearby supplies, fight some bugs effectively, and recruit other ants to join you like a temporary posse of centimeter-tall cowboys, riding across the plains in search of donut chunks. The orb weaver spider buggy functions more as a fighter, dealing more damage than the ant buggy, which helps when taking on the fiercest foes.

Buggies also heal themselves slowly over time, and if they get knocked out, a generous timer lets you get them back into fighting shape before losing them permanently. Effectively, everything these buggies do makes Grounded more enjoyable. The early-game grind through weaker recipes and lesser weapons is hastened by them and the game is better off for it. Obsidian has suggested other buggies will come to the game later, so I’ll continue hoping for one that can fly, but even this early version of the feature is a massive game-changer that makes the game more fun than its predecessor.

These two features are further aided by a narrative throughline, which, like the first game, is more present than stories tend to be in survival-crafting games. The incomplete saga has the same childlike energy as the world’s aesthetic. A mysterious hacker is toying with the teens, brainwashing bugs and taunting your human-sized companion in a way that purposely has you wondering who to trust. Grounded 2’s story is totally fitting of the vibe it’s going for–a ’90s-coded, tween adventure that’s never self-serious, and where the heroes crack jokes usually safe for kids and occasionally edgier, fitting of their advanced age and more for the adults who may be playing as Player 2 (or 3 or 4).

Signposting, like more helpful mission markers and gentle suggestions on what to do next through the game’s lengthy challenge list, left me with far fewer frustrations or questions than I recall the first game hitting me with. Grounded 2’s story and survival gameplay are much stronger than where Grounded 1 left off.

Where the early-access version comes up short is best seen in Creative mode. The game has plenty of new enemies to take on, and the entire map is new, so players in the game’s survival mode will have a long line of new experiences before they brush up against what Creative players can opt in to seeing right away: Many of the first game’s crafting recipes aren’t present. The series’ armor sets are incredibly creative, displaying clever ways to repurpose the bugs’ parts as role-based armor, like turning claws into daggers for a nimble thief-like build, or making a bow and arrow out of bugs’ legs and thorns for the group’s archer.

Decorating houses is even more exciting. This aspect is actually my favorite part of the first game, even though it never quite went as deep as I thought it would. The sequel, unfortunately, hardly shows off anything new in these areas, and much more often lacks what was there at the end of Grounded.

The revealed roadmap for the game suggests those legacy armors, weapons, furnishings, and other craftable items will re-appear over time, and I hope eventually those returning items are seen in the build menus alongside many more fresh ideas, too. Right now, though, that’s just not the case, which makes Grounded 2’s Creative mode feel like a shell of the series’ former self. This means for players like me, who may love playing the co-op story in its proper mode, but wind up spending many more hours in Creative, there’s a lot less to see and do once you get to the end of the game’s incomplete story, or brush up against its work-in-progress artificial walls in the open world.

The map also frustratingly lacks any deep-water sections, with only a few muddy puddles to play in when it comes to water. The first map had a huge koi pond full of yet more scary critters lurking deep below the surface. I looked for such a place in Creative to set up the base of my and my daughter’s new abode in Grounded 2, and I couldn’t find one. Like with Creative’s missing decor and other recipes, I can see water gameplay is on the docket for later during early access, which is fair enough, but that still means Grounded 2 today isn’t the must-have sequel for Creative-focused players.

At least if there’s not much new to look at in Creative, what’s there now looks much better. It was subtle at first, which I attribute to the way memories have a way of recalling games as prettier than they are, but when I dipped back into the first Grounded to compare it to the sequel’s visuals, I was impressed at just how much better Grounded 2 looks. Textures are much more detailed, sunlight peeks through the tall grass more beautifully than before, and likewise, the nighttime has a more authentic darkness to it; it’s still quite difficult to traverse the night without a light of some kind, as it should be, but the transition from day to night and back again is now more pronounced over several hours. Grounded 1 was a nice-looking game, but by ditching the Xbox One, it seems Grounded 2 is able to achieve a greater level of detail than before.

I’ve heard from others that technical issues persisted throughout their experiences. Thankfully, I’ve not had such issues myself. No slowdowns or frame drops were noticeable on my PC, which is a decent rig but far from the best available. The one consistent area of jank I saw was with creatures clipping through the environment. More than once, I was run up on by some of the game’s larger enemies because they were basically attacking from inside of large rocks, sometimes only their stinger or claws sticking out of the geometry.

Because of its stronger starting point, Grounded 2 should wind up the bigger, better, buggier-in-a-good-way survival game. Its best new toys make survival gameplay much smoother and more enjoyable; the adolescent spirit that truly makes Grounded stand out in a sea of survival games is still on full display here, too. It will take some time for Creative mode to catch up and eventually surpass what the first game did for those who like to play this game more like an interior decorator than a hunter-gatherer. All of that means Grounded 2 is a good early-access game that improves on its previous version in some big ways, while still earning the label of being an in-progress experience.