Oxygen Not Included
In the space-colony simulation game Oxygen Not Included you’ll find that scarcities of oxygen, warmth and sustenance are constant threats to your colony's survival. Guide colonists through the perils of subterranean asteroid living and watch as their population grows until they're not simply surviving, but thriving… Just make sure you don't forget to breathe. Build Extensive Bases and Discover What it Takes to Survive: Everything in your space colony is under your control, from excavation and resource allocation right down to plumbing and power systems. Resources will begin depleting with your first breath, however, so be sure to dig fast if you want to live. It’s Mind Over Matter with Stress Simulations: Keep the psychological impact of survival at bay with fun leisure activities, great accommodations and even better food for your colony. Duplicants each have different and potentially destructive ways of reacting to stress, so be sure to always keep them happy. Whatever the cost. Avoid Boiling with Thermodynamics:
Game Discussion
Steam User 189
Oxygen Not Included is a great game (if you have what it takes to enjoy it).
At first, it could easily be mistaken for your basic colony building game: Manage resources, make your people ("duplicants") happy, feed them and build a base.
The early game is somewhat approachable even though you'll be making mistakes which will only have consequences a few hundred cycles (in-game day/night cycles) later.
Your duplicants will try to kill themselves once you stop watching over them, they will piss in your clean water supply, eat through all of your food and medicines, sneeze, fart and vomit, slowly filling up your base with polluted oxygen and henceforth get sick from it.
The game will throw problems after problems at you, all of which can be fixed using one or many ways.
Then mid game happens and you will begin to realize why so many people find this game overly complicated. The mid game expects you to manage fluids, gases, temperature and so many constants that you will feel overwhelmed and dream of ONI at night (those dreams would more often than not be nightmares actually). By the time you're confident enough with the mid-game (steel, plastic, cooling and atmo suits mostly) you should be about 500 hours in (real-time).
From there, expect to double your play time before you even try to reach late game and space exploration and/or magma/ice management.
By reaching over 1300 hours on this game, I can confidently say that I am somewhat okay with late-game and all that the game can throw at me. I've built hundreds of colony on this game and all of them had their own set of problems to solve. The problem that killed the previous colony is something to learn about for the next one and hopefully this next one will go one step further than the last. Emphasis on "hopefully".
The late game is where the heaviest in game slow-killer makes its entrance: Temperature. Your 900 cycles of a sustainable colony will start to overheat and eventually break and/or melt. None of what you built will work anymore, you'll be pumping 70 degrees Celsius oxygen into your base, burning your crops and turning your water supply to hot steam.
No water equals no oxygen. No oxygen equals death.
The Oxygen is indeed Not Included.
This is one of many ways things can go wrong and trust me when I say that things WILL go wrong. From basic math to advanced chemistry through engineering and thermodynamics, this game has it all.
Expect to spend half of your play time on a debug/sandbox map to test things out, read hundreds of wiki entries, make spreadsheets and watch a lot of YouTube content.
There is no other way around it.
If you want a rather chill colony game, Oni is simply not what you're looking for. If you want to learn and think/solve problems (A LOT) then it's the best of its genre.
Add to that Klei's awesome and unique design, music and overall identity and you've got yourself a game that is indefinitely replayable and enjoyable.
Steam User 166
oxygen is in fact, not included.
build a base, lose it within the first hour because you dont know whats going on, try again
build a base, this time actually get food and oxygen set up, lose it within 10 hours because one of your dupes dont like the food, and got very sick, try again
build a base, get everything set up, water purification working, make it quite far, rage quit because you forgot food or o2 in your rocket, try again later
build a base, get everything set up, make it to space sucessfully, attempt to colonize another astroid, fail because you forgot the things in the first step, try again
build a base, get everything set up, colonize another asteroid, colonize the system, have a reactor meltdown destroying your main base, try again
build a base, sucessfully do all the things you want to, realise that you could have done better, try again
in the same vein as dwarf fortress, losing is fun!
Steam User 176
It is like Physics class, but if I had to deal with the fear of drowning in my own piss while starving. Enjoyable.
Steam User 229
pretty cool game, just passed the tutorial
Steam User 507
Closing in on 1200 hours played, I thought it might be time for a review.
This is the best indie game ever made.
That's it, that's the review.
Steam User 295
3780 hours. 'nuff said.
Steam User 86
100 hours and I still have no idea what I'm doing :)