Oxygen Not Included

So I've played this game a bit.
A lot of people are saying this is a hard game, and while I don't disagree, I want to clarify the difficulty comes from the learning curve. Like most colony sims, it is a cliff: there's a bunch of mechanics that are not really explained well in game, and you have to rely on tutorials to fully grasp them.
Once you understand the mechanics, the game is brilliant. There's no random enemies or events, and the game gives you as much time as you want to tackle new projects and deal with its difficulties. That's part of the beauty: if you end up in a bad situation, 90% of the time it's because you put yourself there. The remaining 10% is because there's a cool steam vent that's overheating your base, so watch out for those.
The replayability of the game comes from the worldgen seeds and traits, and the different starting asteroids. The former changes your run slightly, making you adapt to the lack of water sources or giving you an opportunity with extra oil reservoirs; The latter can completely change your build order and meta.
I speak of replayability, but you can just run with the same save for months. Run a colony for long enough, eventually the game turns from a survival colony sim into a sandbox vanity project simulator.
On a side note, the game is regularly updated. Free QoL updates come once or twice a year with balance changes, and small-ish DLCs are planned to be released periodically. There's also some incredible animated shorts released every once in a while, which is pretty neat as well.
I honestly don't think I can convey how truly unique this game is. It has carved a niche spot in a niche market that I don't think another game could possibly fill. 10/10 would and WILL sink another 2k hours.

A really solid game overall, I really enjoy it.
However, I only bought it because they promised, "All future updates will be free, no more DLC".
Then they went back on that and started releasing a bunch of mediocre DLCs.
I don’t think that’s a promise you should be able to just walk back on.
Anyways, it's still a fun game, even if I feel a bit cheated.

As an engineer and physics teacher, I find it a pleasure to write a review for "Oxygen Not Included." This game has captivated me for over 600 hours, and for good reason. It’s one of those rare titles that can make you lose track of time, often at the expense of a good night’s sleep, thanks to its deep and engaging base-building and management mechanics.

The gameplay and art are top-notch, as expected from the creators of "Don’t Starve." The game’s incorporation of real-world physics, chemistry, and even a hint of biology sets it apart from typical base-building titles. Concepts like denser gases sinking, thermal conductivity of materials, and gas flow mechanics aren’t just visual flourishes—they’re crucial to mastering the game’s systems. I’ve even recommended it to some of my students as a fun way to engage with these scientific ideas in a practical context.

One area that feels like a missed opportunity, however, is the game’s approach to electricity. While it introduces the concept of transformers to manage potential differences, it falls short of incorporating more sophisticated concepts like series and parallel circuits. Given the game’s 2D aesthetic, I believe the addition of more realistic electrical systems could have been a natural and engaging fit for players to experiment with.

Make no mistake, this is a challenging game. Your duplicants (the characters you manage) will suffer and perish in various ways—hunger, heat, and oxygen shortages, to name a few—until you master the balancing act required for survival. Problems often reveal themselves too late, forcing you to start over from scratch. But therein lies the charm of "Oxygen Not Included": every failure is a lesson learned. The experience of rebuilding from scratch, armed with newfound knowledge, makes for an incredibly rewarding gameplay loop.

For those who enjoy base-building games, I wholeheartedly recommend "Oxygen Not Included." It’s not always a smooth ride, and losing a base after dozens of hours can be disheartening, but the lessons learned with each restart make every new base a little smarter and more efficient than the last.

The expansions are promising, though I’ve only scratched the surface of the newer ones. Mods, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. There’s a rich modding community offering everything from quality-of-life improvements to full gameplay overhauls. Personally, I’m a bit of a purist, preferring cosmetic mods over those that make the game easier. The only caveat is that mods often break after updates and require patching to work again.

All in all, "Oxygen Not Included" is a meticulously crafted, mentally stimulating, and sometimes brutally unforgiving game. If you’re up for the challenge, it’s well worth your time—just don’t be surprised if it ends up taking more of it than you expected.

Oxygen Not Included isn’t just a game for me—it’s been so much more than that. During one of the darkest, most painful times in my life, it became my escape, my distraction, and honestly, my reason to keep going.
There were days when it felt like I couldn’t handle the weight of everything happening around me, but this game gave me something else to focus on. It’s not just about building or surviving; it’s about creating something out of chaos, and that’s exactly what I needed.
I don’t know where I’d be without it. This game has kept me grounded when everything else felt like it was slipping away. If you’re looking for something challenging, rewarding, and unexpectedly comforting, I can’t recommend Oxygen Not Included enough. For me, it’s not just a game—it’s been a lifeline.

Best tip for new players is to play expecting to start over. Play, learn, let disaster strike, then return with more knowledge and do better. Rinse and repeat several times before stepping into meta gameplay. At least for myself personally, that is how I actually had the most fun with this game. And I tend to typically like to get meta and min max my playtime in games, so it was a switch.

10/10 would suffocate again.

Oxygen not Included is a great survival simulator with a robust set of map and character options allowing everyone to play to their own tastes. The dev team is highly involved and constantly adding new content to keep older players engaged while, at the same time, they continue to make small balance adjustments to keep play even. As someone who started playing this game back in the before times, I really appreciate their work on it. The game is fun, the difficulty ranges from challenging to relaxed, the humor is right up my alley, and the DLC is high quality and affordable. I rarely post like this, but Klei deserves a pat on the back and an attaboy. Good job, and thank you for an amazing game.

I have played this game since the beginning of early access, and I must say it's the most captivating Colony Sim game I have ever played. The artwork of the game is all cartoonish, but behind the cute-looking visuals is a very complex game with lots of mechanics to learn. The game throws a lot of challenges to the player in a natural way, and the player must scramble their brain to figure out how to solve multiple problems at once. The game has a lot of layers, and these layers have their own distinct visual indicators, such as temperature, materials, piping, light, radiation, and many more. My favorite aspect of this game is solving problems using automated systems, it's very similar to Redstone in Minecraft, but more intuitive, while being equally complex. The Thermodynamics involved in the game is also incredible, it makes me wonder how such a hardware-demanding simulation can run so smoothly in PCs which aren't necessarily top end. The game has also been continously updated since the early access days, the people at Klei are great.