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When we saw the first trailer of Grounded, many of us thought we’d be watching a Joe Johnston movie. A few others thought Rick Moranis would show up. If that reference hasn’t sunk in yet, I’m talking about Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, but I’ll stop before I feel any older. Any in case, Grounded was a refreshing take on the whole survival crafting genre, which, instead of placing us in yet another high-fantasy setting, dropped us in a backyard to survive against insects and discover some high-tech facilities hidden there. Was it all part of an experiment? Why were we shrunk in the first place? Well, to give you a bit of a refresher before Grounded 2 launches, here’s an explanation of the story of Grounded.
Groundbreaking Science
Before delving into the actual topic of shrunken teenagers, we need a bit of background on why that happened. The story of Grounded, which will definitely connect to Grounded 2, begins with Dr. Wendell Tully, henceforth known as Tully. Tully worked in a company called Ominent. At the time, his inventions weren’t well-received by those in the company. Most of his ideas were shut down. However, he returns to work on one of his previous ideas: the shrinking machine. And yes, you guessed it, it is a machine that shrinks. Sorry to make it obvious, but I prefer to explain it before you ask Grok about what I literally just said.
Anyway, Tully decides to work on this machine, not inside Ominent, but in his backyard. Yes, the place where Grounded takes place and the story unfolds. To help him with the shrinking machine, Tully activates BURG.L, everyone’s favorite robot, and the one that sends you to hellish places full of black ants, spiders, and sunken laboratories. Sorry, BURG.L, I love you, but that darn pond was awful. Oh yeah, BURG.L was supposed to be a robot for a fast-food chain, in case you wonder where its name comes from.
A few years after working on the shrinking machine, Tully and BURG.L finish it, and name it SPAC.R. I’ll keep calling it the shrinking machine, don’t worry. In any case, Tully runs some initial tests, and they are a complete failure, until he manages to successfully shrink a few objects. During some of the tests, before Tully shrank himself (spoiler alert), he discussed his success with one Dr. Klein from Ominent. Tully would soon discover this is the second mistake of his life, the first being the shrinking machine.
As you can imagine, the big suits ask for a demonstration of Tully’s machine. Tully, after being rejected worse than a kid with braces on prom night, agrees to the demonstration eagerly. Unfortunately, when the public test occurs, it goes terribly wrong. The machine malfunctions, ruining Tully’s reputation. Eventually, Ominent fires Tully.
A Scientist Reborn
But if Umbrella scientists didn’t stop until they created the ultimate world-ending virus, why would Tully stop? I swear, therapy would stop so many world-threatening things. But just like a person out of a toxic relationship, Tully starts to bloom and progress with his shrinking machine.
Tully starts hitting his stride and starts living a double life—teacher during the day, antisocial scientist at night. Additionally, he finally begins to shrink himself. As a side note and a pretty important one, he starts having family issues. During this period, he also discovers the Raw Science particle, which is what makes the shrinking and unshrinking thing possible. Yes, that’s also an in-game resource, so there’s your lore explanation.
Months after that, Tully starts bringing in, as he says in his audio notes, “borrowed” tech from Ominent to set up labs all across the backyard. These places allow him to experiment with Raw Science further and traumatize players. Again, pond lab? Yeah, you know it. The kicker here is that these lab modules that Tully puts all around his backyard were actually part of his rejected ideas. Ominent turned what would be a toy set into functioning labs, so let that sink in for a while. Ominent was actually using Tully’s ideas without him knowing about it.
Back in the normal-sized world, Tully’s kid damaged a lab with a frisbee. This made Tully realize two things: one, Ominent tech is as flimsy as an Apple device, and two, he needed to create security measures to prevent insects from coming inside the facilities. And that’s your other lore bomb of how those lab bots came to exist.
Some boring family drama ensues soon after. Tully is forced to go on vacation, but hey, he invented the ziplines we can use in-game, so spending forced time with your family actually has its benefits. But since Tully can’t catch a break, he starts experiencing the side effects of the shrinking process, which include wrinkling and hair loss, much like the things we suffer when we turn 30.
Enter Ominent
At this time, Ominent started watching Tully’s from the shadows, and here is where the Grounded story truly kicks off. He discovers a few radio signals around the backyard, which, yes, come from Ominent. However, that doesn’t stop Tully, as he continues to create different experiments that the players will eventually use.
The most important event of this time is the arrival of Scapes Amalgamated, a company hired by Tully’s wife to repair a pipe leak. However, this was a fake company, as the employees are undercover Ominent members who use the pipe leak incident to spy on him. Tully fires Scapes, his wife divorces him, and well, things just start going sideways for our scientist.
Instead of returning to his family, he begins experimenting with Raw Science and fungal matter to find a cure for the side effects of shrinking. While there is some breakthrough in the whole fungal experimentation, some of it escapes from containment and starts infecting insects around the backyard. If you remember the Infected Ladybug fight, that’s what caused it.
However, the worst happened when Tully hit his lowest point, or rather, wrinkliest point, as he had missed the mark on many experiments to prevent the side effects of shrinking. For that, he now focused on creating a new body, which players will remember as MANT, a combination of bug and man, and something you can find in Grounded almost at the end of the story.
The Teenagers and the Future
I’ve now covered all the events before the story of Grounded kicks in, which should be enough to let you know what the heck is happening in the backyard. But now, let’s see what happens with these poor teenagers and how it all sets the stage for Grounded 2.
To understand how the teenagers arrive at the backyard, we need to talk about Director Schmector. An optional boss in the game that leads to the good ending, and the one who had been stealing Tully’s experiments. One of those experiments was the shrinking machine. At this time, Ominent had developed its own machine, but also had the same issues: the side effects. The company discovered that teenagers were immune to the side effects. Like any other evil enterprise, it started kidnapping teenagers, with Ominent abducting eight. During the game, we assume that Ominent killed four of them. Yet, a scientist in Ominent decided to rescue the final four, which are the playable characters, and throw them into Tully’s backyard. And that’s where the game begins.
There’s some lore about the teenagers here and there, but what’s important is the actual events of the game we’ve all played. In short, they discover everything I’ve already talked about, fight a lot of insects, and look for a way to go back to normal size. What is important, though, is that the teenagers find Dr. Tully, who was inside a floating tank, and only his deformed head remained. The teenagers team up with Tully and take down Director Schmector, while also creating the embigenning cocktail, which would reverse the shrinking.
The teenagers return to their normal size. Authorities arrest Schmector. Tully becomes a respected scientist. And well, it seems like everything is now fine. Or that’s what we thought before the sequel announcement. Now, this next part is all speculation as the game is just right around the corner, so here I go.
For starters, and judging by the story trailer of Grounded 2, the teenagers are back in their miniature-sized hell. They’ll be in a park now, however, so that’s about to be fun for them. However, there is a fifth teenager who might make an appearance. During Grounded, you see notes of another teenager that Ominent shrunk and likely abandoned in the backyard. While many of us thought they’d be dead, if you look at the recent trailer, the fifth teenager seems to be angry at Ominent and looking for revenge, judging by the markings inside the laboratories.
How will the story unfold? That’s uncertain, especially since we’ll be playing the game from early access to its full launch, so it might take a while. But you now have everything you need to understand the story of Grounded 2. All that remains is waiting to see what Obsidian Entertainment has in store for this not-so-small new journey.
