Grounded introduces Shared Worlds, making multiplayer much easier

Grounded is the charming survival game that has remained in Early Access for a while now. Although, not for much longer, with the game slated to release on September 27 of this year. In the meantime, Obsidian is not neglecting updates for the game, with the latest change to be introduced involving Shared Worlds.

The adventure itself sees takes Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and turns it into a video game. As a pint-sized version of your former self, you must navigate blades of grass and spar with unfriendly insects to get by. While the game is certainly fun to play solo, it reaches its full potential when played co-operatively with friends.

That said, multiplayer can be relatively troublesome. Previously, co-op required one player - the host - to be online for anyone to play on that chosen world. Every time someone wanted to play, the host would need to be around. Now, obviously not everyone has the same schedules, and this can pose an issue.

This is where Shared Worlds comes in. Announced in Obsidian’s latest public test notes, Shared Worlds are ones that can be stored in the cloud and played by anyone with access to them; the host is no longer required for anyone to play.

Additionally, your hard work in your Standard World is not lost. You’ll be able to covert these to a Shared World if needed, and you can create a copy of the world for you to play solo, too. As well as that, all progress, regardless of who the host is, will be saved for someone else to pick up from later.

You can even use the new Shared Worlds system to have worlds that are playable through various platforms or copies of the game. Obsidian have, however, advised that this feature is obviously still in beta and players should take caution.

Primarily, be sure to save offline copies of your worlds when making significant progress, just in case your online progress is reset or lost as bugs are ironed out.

This new feature certainly makes hosting multiplayer worlds much easier, and hopefully, with the release of Grounded 1.0 just around the corner, may encourage more people to play the game together.