The half-hour demo for Grounded is such a pleasant surprise

Before today, I thought that Grounded, a shrunken-kids survival game from the RPG powerhouse Obsidian, had decent potential. It's not exactly the studio's bread and butter, but the pitch – a solo/co-op adventure in which you'll chop down blades of grass and fend off monstrous spiders – drew me in.

After trying the 30-minute Steam demo and digging it enough to go through it twice (and even consider a third run-through), I'm sold on this surprisingly fresh angle. If you're partial to crafting-centric games and you enjoy exploring creative spaces that make you feel like anything could be lurking on the horizon, you should check it out too. One of the standout "landmarks" I discovered was an action-figure head.