Grounded comes to PS5 and Switch – but performance is a problem

Rounding out the initial quartet of Xbox Studio titles announced for PlayStation 5, miniature survival game Grounded has arrived on Sony’s machine – and Nintendo Switch too. Given that we last looked at Grounded in early access on Xbox One and PC way back in 2020, these two new releases give us a perfect opportunity to reappraise all platforms today. And so, here we’ve got PS5, Switch, Series X, Series S and PC in focus, as we see how all compare in terms of fidelity and performance. Most importantly, does the PS5 edition recreate the Series X experience, or are there graphics changes as we saw in Hi-Fi Rush on its PS5 debut? And for Switch, how does its handheld play actually hold up with 30 frames per second as the target?

For the uninitiated, Grounded is a survival game in the mould of Valheim or Ark: Survival Evolved that lets you loose on a garden after being shrunk down to the size of a figurine. You wake up to a jungle of looming grass blades, evade spiders, navigate all manner of discarded gadgets and junk, scavenge for food, and above all – through the power of science – seek a way to return to your normal size. The central conceit calls to mind Andy’s garden from Pixar’s Toy Story, or even Disney’s comedy adventure Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

It’s a great survival-themed backdrop – deploying heavy bokeh depth of field to truly sell the scale of its world. We’re not getting an all-guns-a-blazing showcase for Unreal Engine here by any means. But still, it’s a fun idea with solid execution, featuring a day-night cycle plus some beautiful volumetric lighting effects. Impressively, these latest ports to PS5 and Switch also include cross-play by linking to a Microsoft account, so up to four friends across multiple platforms can combine forces to build structures and survive the creatures of the garden.

Let’s get straight to the comparisons then, with a focus on PS5 first. For such a simplistic game stylistically you’d hope for close parity with Series X, but there are a few differences – starting with a different target resolution. On PS5 we’re getting a dynamic range between 1080p and 1215p, which is the most typical number. That means a softer image than on Series X, which itself ranges from 1512p up to 4K but is more often at the lower end. Looking at the same scene side-by-side, PS5 is often at a resolution disadvantage – for example 1620p on Series X versus 1215p on PS5 in one matched frame test. That’s an unusually wide divide that did warrant a lot of repeat testing to confirm, but it does seem to be consistent.