Enter Antony. That’s a nickname, by the way. You can call your ant anything you want. Sadly ‘Barely Sentient Roomba’ and ‘Three Pupae In A Chitinous Trench Coat’ were both too long for the text field. God, the things I would give to hear Attenborough talk shit about this ant. Is that a thing he’s ever done on film, I wonder? Attenborough, that is? Talked smack? Sworn? Sighed, even?

“Incompetence. Many would consider it a deeply human trait.” You can all but hear him musing with the tone of an I’m-not-angry-I’m-just-disappointed father. “They would be wrong. Six legs. Five eyes. Zero sense of self-preservation. This ant is an embarrassment not only to her family and her species, but also to her two-legged teenage companion. Who has, it appears, now perished. Again.”

Unfortunately, I doubt Obsidian has Attenborough money. Even post-Microsoft acquisition. And if I’m honest, it would feel a bit cruel to call him away from filming The Green Planet II for an ant. Especially this ant, who is more at home among the Grifaffes (Giraffes), Plopatypluses (Platypuses), and Germangodangs (German Shepherds) of mockumentary YouTuber Ze Frank than anything on the BBC or Discovery Channel, anyway.

In our time together she has gotten stuck on rocks, weeds, and walls, knocked herself unconscious jumping from millimeter-tall heights, and watched with growing apathy as I’ve been stung, bitten, and beaten ‘til I’m bloody and bruised. But she has also hauled grass planks, skittered through the undergrowth to deliver me to safety almost as many times as she’s gotten me killed, and has fast become one of my favourite Obsidian adventuring buddies despite never uttering a single word.

Fuck, I love this bug. Or should I say, Buggy?

And they call it a Buggy! A Buggy! Puns aside (and there are oh so many delightful ones littering this script) videogame bugs have always been Obsidian’s greatest enemy. In Grounded, they made them ours, and while they’ve flirted with the idea of friendship since (2021’s Shroom and Doom update let players tame Aphids and Weevils), with Grounded 2 the team is finally answering a question the community has been posing for over five years: “If not friend, why friend shaped?”

“This was the main feature we wanted to bring to the game," creative director Justin Vazquez told Game Developer back in September. “It was the number one request from the community and it was the biggest justification as to why we wanted to create a new world in Grounded 2. Even if the team had wanted to do it in the first one, the world wasn't built to support it.”

And so we get Brookhollow Park. So we get Buggies. So we get Antony. Smartly, Buggies don't remove friction from Grounded 2. They just lessen it. Bend it like a blade of grass, then, rather than break it. And gosh, is there friction here. So, so much friction! Surviving Brookhollow Park is a satisfyingly tactile act — all bumped elbows and scraped knees — with traditional survival needs cascading like a chain of distracting sidequests from any number of Obsidian’s RPGs.

I need blueberries to craft leather, except they’re guarded by Orb Weaver Spiders, and those are weak to Spicy, so I should repair my Scorching Orb Staff before I go, but to do that I need more Spicy Shards… and on, and on, and on. So far, so survival crafting. Yet it’s the trajectory of Obsidian’s take on this formula — where you grow braver, as much as stronger — that makes it special. There are few things in gaming this year as rewarding as besting a Larva, then a Red Ant Soldier, then an Orb Weaver Spider, until you’re charging through a sprawling tunnel system, spoiling for a fight with the Cockroach Queen for the weapons and recipes she's guarding.

I guess this is why everyone loved Grounded, huh? I know, I know. I’m late to this party. Call it ignorance. Call it a break. Call it mid-2000s Steam Early Access-induced survival-crafting fatigue. But it’s been an age since one of these games has held my attention quite like this. Minecraft? Eh. Satisfactory? Sure. Factorio? It’s fine! But for the first time since DayZ Standalone launched into Early Access in 2013 — where I all but played the part of ‘unpaid community manager’ over on Tumblr — I find myself obsessing over every patch note and preview trailer.

Did you know Obsidian is teasing Woolly Aphids for the Winter Update? That they’ve released concept art of Ladybuggies Ladybug mounts that suggest they’ll function like miniature tanks? Or that YouTubers have found a snake model slithering its way through the game’s files?! I sure did! I’ve also rolled credits on the Early Access questline, defeated AXL the Tarantula not once but twice (sans friends) on release day — the first gargantuan, grindable, raid-like boss introduced in September’s Hairy and Scary update — and have since been passing the time ‘til the next patch, eyeing other supposed modern survival-crafting classics like Abiotic Factor and Enshrouded, in the hope of scratching this newfound itch… only to start the original Grounded for the first time.

I never thought I’d say it, but I just can’t get enough of Obsidian’s bugs.

Oh. Yeah. That’s right. Obsidian made this, huh? It still feels like a bit of a practical joke, if I’m honest. An SNL sketch, if you will. One where a distracted executive misheard “We should fix our buggy game” as “We should make a buggy game!” and the rest, as they say, was misguided history. Or it would be, if these weren’t also some of the most charming survival-crafting games the genre has ever seen and, just quietly, in a year where Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 released to a muted critical reception, perhaps some of the most exciting work to come out of Obsidian in years.

Here is a studio that, like Attenborough, had seemingly already charted every corner of the videogame industry — from galaxies far, far away in the scrappy sequel Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords to the post-apocalyptic wastes of Las Vegas, Nevada in series fan-favourite Fallout: New Vegas — and yet here they were on the Gamescom 2025 showfloor alongside the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and this year's other bug game (Hollow Knight: Silksong), showcasing their game that dares to simply look at the world, down there, around our feet.

And what a world it is! Other developers have built entire virtual continents in search of the kind of Alice in Wonderland-esque awe Obsidian inspires with a map that’s still only a third of its planned size. Rummage through Brookhollow Park's Snackbar and you’ll find a smorgasbord of creepy crawlies; tiptoe beneath the foggy, low-hanging branches on Pine Hill and you’ll uncover a stash of larger-than-life lingonberries ripe for the crafting; steal a single, solitary moment to sit atop the Picnic Table as the setting sun casts the park in shades of autumn, and you’ll catch the sounds of a bee snoring wistfully beside you with a “mi-mi-mi-mi-mi”.

It’s in those moments — the emergent ones where a Northern Scorpion and Praying Mantis Nymph tussle like two warring Kaiju, or when you hear the game’s developers talking about much-needed buffs coming to the Mage class on a livestream — that you truly start to see Obsidian’s 20+ years of design pedigree strewn throughout this park like a set of giant, muddy size 14 footprints.

That pedigree is responsible — at least in part — for how much of my time in Brookhollow Park has been spent simply building. Another part is the toolset, the aesthetic, and, more than that, the pervasive sense of terror. The ‘Honey I Shrunk The Kids by way of A Bug’s Life’ comparisons have always felt reductionist, but that’s never more true than when the fog rolls in and you’re left stumbling through the claustrophobic undergrowth as half-seen shapes chitter in the dark. Building a safe place to hide — let alone a fun place to live — has never felt so necessary. And with the help of your new Buggy companion, it has never felt so seamless.

The final and, perhaps, most important part is Obsidian's design ethos. Survival-crafting as a genre often gets hung up on grand, sweeping acts of colonisation. Harvest the world. Build a base. Wage a war. Yet kids? They have altogether different priorities. Let them loose in the local park and watch as they decide that a break in the bushes is, in fact, a home. That the branches above their head are bunk beds. That the bark is a dinner plate, that the hollow in the trunk is haunted, and that the ant crawling along a leaf has a name, a family, and a job.

By shrinking the stakes — and its heroes — Grounded 2 evokes the sensation of playing pretend beneath the bushes with your friends as a kid better than any other game since... well, Grounded.  That’s not to say there isn’t violence here — progression comes at the cost of a million bugs squashed in the name of “Raw Science!” — but survival feels less like an act of virtual genocide and instead closer to something bordering on reverence or, dare I say it, respect, as though you’re equal parts documentarian, entomologist, and taxidermist.

Around day eighty-something, I lost Antony. Literally. She got herself wedged beneath a rock as we emerged from a cave, then just… up and disappeared. From the Ant Nest. From our home. And from Brookhollow Park as a whole. It felt fitting, in a way. That a classic videogame bug would claim her in the end. But it speaks volumes to the sense of camaraderie Obsidian fosters between you and your new many-legged companion that I immediately braved a return trip through Hatchery Ant Hill to drag a new egg back to base. Twenty-four hours later, Antony 2.0 was born.

Despite the '2.0', nothing much has changed. Not yet, at least. But that won't always be the case, such is the way these Early Access things tend to go. In time, Obsidian may tweak her AI. Alter her hitbox. Or improve her pathfinding. Just as Brookhollow Park — and Grounded 2 itself — will evolve on its journey to Version 1.0 and beyond.

Yet as I look ahead, I can’t help but keep circling back to David Attenborough’s parting words as he brings Life in the Undergrowth to an end. “These small creatures are within a few inches of our feet, wherever we go on land — but often, they’re disregarded,” he says before the credits roll on series finale Supersocieties. “We would do very well to remember them.”

It’s here that Attenborough and I finally, wholeheartedly agree, because no matter how much Grounded 2 changes in the months and years to come, I don’t think I'll ever forget this chaotic, clumsy mess of an ant and the partially-constructed version of Brookhollow Park she called home.