Brant came across a photograph showing a fighter pilot in her mid-to-late thirties. She’s in her flight suit, carrying a helmet. She stares down the lens without smiling, both assertive and at ease, but the first thing you notice is her belly. Her suit’s open and she’s pregnant. Her bump is the same shape as her helmet. “It’s just this amazing photo: maternity, sexuality and the warrior.” Brant had needed an “in”, a figure to embody the dilemmas drones posed. As he says, “it’s very hard to write a machine as a protagonist”. The image helped the play fall into place. That survival-crafting foundation is stronger than ever in Grounded, too, not least because this latest update sits atop a heap of new features and improvements that have been added to the game (and carefully iterated on) over the last two years. Whether playing alone or with up to three other friends online, the urge to explore, conquer, and invest yourself into the Grounded ecosystem remains ever compelling thanks to a vast wealth of progression paths to engage with. The character description is instructive. It’s startlingly precise, specifying her 1.5 mile run-time (13 minutes, 56 seconds or less) and the number of press-ups (50) and push-ups (27) she should complete in a minute. Brant remembers the actor who played the pilot, Lucy Ellinson, apologising. She could only do so many press ups.

Earlier this year, Ed lit choreographer Holly Blakey’s ‘Cowpuncher My Ass’ at London’s Royal Festival Hall. He was associate lighting designer to Malcolm Rippeth on a co-production of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ in partnership with Garsington Opera, Irish National Opera, and Sante Fe, and was associate to Josh Harriette on Richard Chappell’s explosive dance work ‘Hot House’. Emma Howlett is a director and writer based in London. She has staged largescale revivals at major regional venues in the UK such as Lucy Prebble’s ‘Enron’ at the Oxford Playhouse, and Michael Frayn’s ‘Copenhagen’ at Theatre Royal Bath, and has assisted distinguished British directors such as Polly Findlay and Stephen Unwin.Interactive activities and critical thinking questions in every chapter so you can put your knowledge into practice The story of a year in the garden. If you want to dig deeper into the processes of growing your own organic food, self-sufficiency practitioner, Liz Zorab, offers insights to the rhythm and patterns of her gardening year. In this personal gardening journey, she explores seasonal harvests and how the vegetable garden sits within the wider context of the gardening landscape – including weather, microclimates, water cycles, light levels, seasons and the gardener’s personal tastes and preferences. Given your small stature and the massive scale of the world around you, Grounded does a great job of making you feel as if you're out of your depth at every turn. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios) Grounded is a first and third-person cooperative survival game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios. It was first revealed at X019 in London and entered early access on July 28th, 2020. It was released for Xbox and PC on September 27, 2022.

I also have a special love for the cold north: give me half a chance and I will return to the Scottish Highlands or the arctic north of Finland. That said, I can easily pass several weeks running around the many lovely islands of the Atlantic. Day-to-day I enjoy small adventures close to home and can be found biking, swimming, running and kayaking in the beautiful UK uplands with The Little Blue Camper Van. Claire is the Clinical Director of CHEW Initiatives, helping parents and professionals understand and know what to do to best help the children they are worried about. The student-focused guide to grounded theory, this book takes you step by step through the whole research process, from creating a research proposal to sharing your findings. I am also a writer, adventurer and occasional art-maker – exploring the intersections between nature connection, adventure, human and planetary health and wellbeing, movement and story. I occasionally work with brands to deliver important ‘people + planet’ health messages.

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For thousands of years, our ancestors held a close connection with the landscapes they lived in. They imbued it with meaning: stone monuments, sacred groves, places of pilgrimage. In our modern world we have rather lost that enchantment and intimate knowledge of place. From side quests to the main story, you'll be expected to find certain items along the way. There are also plenty of discoverable locations, hidden items and secrets for you to uncover. Our guides cover them all whether you're looking for juice boxes, SCA.B schemes or BURGL chips. It can be grindy sometimes, though. Like any survival game, some of your time will be taken up by scavenging for ingredients, and some are easier to come by than others (thank the lord for the sap catcher, as I struggle to see the stuff out in the wild), but there's no race here. No time limits. The main draw of the 1.0 version will be the inclusion of the (fascinating) story elements, something players have been calling for, and whilst this new feature has been woven skillfully around its the sandbox elements, Grounded is one of those wonderful playgrounds that thrives even without a story mode; we know, because thousands of people have already invested thousands of hours doing so. To be clear: just because it doesn't quite work for me doesn't mean I'm not incredibly appreciative that that arachnophobia Safe Mode exists! More games should have one, actually, for any in-game critters that trigger common phobias, such as rats, snakes, and so on. My problem, I think, is that the way the blobs move is too reminiscent of spiders. That, and the fact they hiss if you stray too close; it's a dreadful sound, almost as bad as the big boys in Animal Crossing: New Horizons… and that's saying something.

In a 2015 production of Grounded at the Park theatre, north London, the role of the Pilot was shared by BSL signer Nadia Nadarajah and Charmaine Wombwell. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Emma is the Artistic Director of TheatreGoose, a creative collective staging bold new and classic works rooted in movement and a recognisable aesthetic, which she formed whilst at university. TheatreGoose’s acclaimed debut professional show, 'Her Green Hell', written and directed by Howlett, opened at VAULT Festival in February 2023, transferred to Summerhall at the Edinburgh Fringe for four weeks in August, and will tour the UK in 2024. Her Green Hell was longlisted for the prestigious BBC Writersroom Popcorn Award for New Writing at the Fringe, and will receive mentorship from BBC Commissioners for TV adaptation. In 2008 I completed my PhD in Himalayan Geology with fieldwork seasons in India and Bangladesh. I have spent my adult life travelling the mountains of the world by foot. Highlights include, the South American Andes, The Romanian Carpathian, The Slovakian High Tatra, the Moroccan High Atlas, the Western Alps of France, Switzerland and Austria, and the Japan Alps. That was what did it for Haydon, how tight the play felt. “I don’t like reading plays and I find that, if they don’t hold you, your attention can slip quite easily. Grounded just really gripped me.” He knew exactly where it should be staged: Edinburgh, specifically the Traverse. The length was right, the form was self-aware, the politics were urgent. “I remember ringing [the playwright] Adam Brace and saying, ‘I’ve just found a play that’ll win a Fringe First.’” Grounded was reviewed on Xbox Series X/S, with a code provided by the publisher. More info Available platforms In autumn 2018, I ran solo and unsupported across the Bosnian Dinaric Alps, an assumed world first, and I continue to enjoy inspiring people through new adventures that combine my love for place, people and purpose. In 2020, I will return to the Balkans to run the Dinaric Alps again from Montenegro to Albania.