Oxygen Not Included

can be a bit tricky at first but overall good game

This game is fantastic fun, and it's motivated me into learning about hydrogen gases and stuff.

Difficult, but super fun once you get into it!

Absolutely fabulous game!
I love the micromanaging and different challenges, you will spend hours without even realizing.
It's hard, but definitely worth it!
I've spent hours and only ever reached early midgame, so the price will pay off!

I love the simplistic style while the info could be overhwhelming it does'nt throw it all at you at once

Amazing game if you love micromanagement and automation. New shit gets released regularly and replays don't feel boring at all.

Review: Oxygen Not Included – A Personal Journey Through Colony Management

I own only the base game, and I can confidently say it offers more than enough content to keep you engaged. The learning curve is quite steep, but the game encourages a “learning by doing” approach. At first, I spent my time experimenting, making mistakes, and gradually figuring out how everything works. It took me many restarts to feel comfortable with the early game, but each attempt taught me something new and helped my progress become smoother.

When I finally built my first rocket, I wasn’t well prepared. Meteor showers repeatedly battered my launch pad and surrounding structures, and I struggled to juggle repairs, base maintenance, and rocket construction all at once. Realizing I needed a better strategy, I started over with a clear plan for protecting my rocket from meteors and reorganizing my base layout. That fresh start paid off: by then, I was confident in my ability to handle the early and mid-game challenges, which let me quickly gather the resources needed for the final stages.

My most recent playthrough was my best yet. I fully upgraded my base, secured reliable food production, maintained high morale among my duplicants, and had more than enough materials to build rockets and whatever else I needed. Once my base became largely self-sustaining, I could focus on rockets and exploration purely for fun. That feeling of watching a smoothly running colony—where I didn’t have to micromanage every task—was extremely satisfying.

Throughout my journey, I relied on trial and error rather than external guides. Figuring out how plumbing, ventilation, and power systems interacted became rewarding in itself. I’ll admit: there were moments of frustration when my water supply froze, oxygen production floundered, or a new biome threw unexpected challenges at me. But each setback pushed me to refine my designs and approach problems more holistically.

My biggest tip for new players is to take things at your own pace. Don’t worry about how many cycles have passed—resources are more abundant than they first seem, and you can always adapt your strategy. It’s perfectly fine to start over if you feel stuck; every restart will make your next base stronger. Embrace the trial-and-error mindset, and you’ll find that even failures teach you something valuable.

My only minor critique is that the late game can sometimes feel a bit repetitive. Once you’ve mastered the essential mechanics and secured a self-sustaining base, the core challenge diminishes. I managed to launch rockets, but I haven’t yet completed the final rift mission simply because I know it’s just a matter of gathering a few more materials and finishing research. At that point, the fun of overcoming new challenges can wane.

Thankfully, there are DLCs and gameplay modifiers that add fresh goals and higher difficulty. Trying a more challenging start biome or increasingly difficult settings can reignite that sense of discovery. In its base form, though, Oxygen Not Included remains an exceptionally deep and rewarding colony simulator. If you enjoy careful planning, resource management, and creative problem-solving, this game is absolutely worth diving into.

One of the very finest resource-management games in existence, with a reasonable learning curve into a sophisticated set of interlocking systems that inevitably result in creative chaos. Just when you think you have it mastered, they add another system to master. Honestly, this is some of the best value for money that I've ever spent. Highly, highly recommended.

dupe run into my boiler, suffers 3rd degree burns, survives at 1 hp, heals, aaaand repeat, this game is a massive babysitting game

One of the hardest games I've ever played. I love it! Been playing on and off for 5 years and I keep coming back for more. Highly recommended (for smart people).

If you like colony management, just buy it.
There is no better choice than this. There is no action like Rimworld, but it makes up with the science stuff you can build. This game was my entry into colony based games, I played Rimworld after this.
I didn't even know I liked colony games until I played this. Thanks Klei!

make the sims a hardcore galactic cloning game and here you've got oxygen not included <3

i saw markiplier play this game a many years back and decided to pick it up then. i have yet to put it down since. i have like 4 games TOTAL in my steam library, and this is the only game that i play at all. i adore this game! its so cute! its so charming! and it so much fun to problem solve for theres lil dummies lmao. im still looking for another colony management game the matches the amazingness of this game but i've yet to find one.

1000/10 would recommend

At the end of the day, this is an ant farm simulator. You'll give them tasks, they'll do them, but someone will come along and cause your one of the duplicants to get stuck on a ledge in a bunch of CO2 and they'll drop dead. It is a really fun ant farm simulator, and it is nice to get further than you did last time with keeping your little ants alive. Eventually, you'll fling the little ants to other planets!

Very fun game to think about not only oxygen, but also food, electricity, heat dissipation and food preservation, highly recommended.

This game is AMAZING!! Do you like survival games? Crafting games? Are you a little nerdy? Perfect game for you. Or, do you like cute little characters, adorable mobs, interesting lore / story bits, and making super cute living areas or environments? Then this is also for you! I love that this game can be as hard or easy as you want it to be, and you can either learn the bare minimum of the mechanics or dive so deep into them you basically relearn thermodynamics and chemical engineering. 20/10!!

super fun and easy to learn and play

Awesome ideas with a poor execution.

The concept is great, the puzzles interesting but unfortunately they very often turn out to be unintuitive and "gamey". You'll learn about the limitations and quirks of the game engine and then that's all you're going to be doing. In the end it's all about finding the best exploits to solve your issue at hand or try not to exploit and enter a world of frustration that some mods will fix but only for a while.

The fluid mechanics with change of phases is probably the most interesting aspect of the game but it pales in comparison to games like Stationeers for example. Fluids don't mix (a tile can only have one element occupying it, the root of most exploits), pressure equalises at a snail's pace, only temperature matters for a change of phase, pressure is irrelevant and pressure and temperature do not interact. Pipes are just conveyors transporting packets, not actual pipes. There is no concept of pressure in them.

The germs/sickness/health mechanic is half baked and can be totally ignored.

Game rules are hidden and inconsistent: i.e. an autosweeper cannot grab a liquid bottle unless it contains a metal. Why? And how can anyone know that other than lurking on the Discord?

Many exploits that are the bread an butter of normal playthrough. Sure it's a singleplayer game and you don't have to use them but you'll feel like you're shooting yourself in the foot and constantly trying to avoid game engine quirks just isn't fun.

Best management game ever made. Temperature management, gas management, liquid management, phase change management, Material management, refining management, building management, animal management, plant management, food management, bathroom management, power management, morale management, automation management.

I swear if I had doctorate in thermodynamics / plumbing / HVAC / nuclear engineering / basic farming and ranching I still wouldn't be prepared to play this game.

10/10 would blow my head off again.

I like it. A lot. Came from it after searching for similar games like Rimworld....
i feel like Rimworld is easier tho, in Oxygen not included i hit a point for now where i get overwhelmed by Stress and/or lack of sufficient Management from my part so all starts falling apart :(

Finnaly at least started to understand how the Gas and Electric filters and automatic setups work :)

Gotta say the learning curve feels more like a vertical line tho.

Feels like a Factorio + Rimworld mix on smaller Scale and sadly i didnt play Factorio yet myself, so im kinda ass with setting up supply lines.

Cute and fun! If you like farming games, give this a try too for something different but similar.

Such an awesome sim colony management game with very well made systems, albeit not very well explained. I lost count how many times I thought I started well, just to have the entire colony of dupes fall because I didn't pay attention to the heat levels or unbreathable gas levels for example, some of the most important aspects of the game you need to pay attention to.

The game is easy to play, but very hard to master. Reason why I advise to find a couple of basic tutorials before you dive deep into the game (e.g. @GCFungus channel on youtube).

If you're reading negative reviews, you probably want to know about any dealbreakers that might make this game not fun for you. After 600+ hours of loving this game, I'm uninstalling; here's why. Hope this helps.

ONI has a dozen intersecting systems including air, light, heat, plumbing, food, power, critters, germs, automation, and decor. Overlays help you view each core system, but even so, a lot of things aren't intuitive. And once you get a handle your colony's needs, this largely becomes a heat management game with a side of space exploration. Heat becomes the main boss from the mid-game on, as most of your systems generate it, the insulating earth contains it, and it's tricky to counter it.

Other issues include a priority system for your duplicant colonists that dupes often ignore, wonky water physics, and odd quirks, like the fact that once something's built you can't move it: you have to destroy and build elsewhere, even just one square to the left. Also, mod support used to be great and the game was vastly enhanced by the modding community, but increasingly, mods make the game crash, at least for me.

Klei's flagship Don't Starve is a survival game that throws you into the deep end without explaining much. ONI mostly does the same, which doesn't really feel right for a colony builder. Both games really count on the community to fill in the blanks with wikis, tutorials and tips. Do you like to tab out of a game to go research why your plumbing backed up? You're in luck. If you love to consult wikis and ponder thermodynamics and enjoy setting up if/then programming systems, ONI is probably for you.

The first ten hours of a colony in ONI are mostly fun. I absolutely love the visual style. I enjoy watching the duplicants tootle around the map and munch on their meals and react to stress and happiness. I love the point-of-interest finds when you discover traces of previous colonies; I wish there were more POI puzzles and exploration. But that side of the game is incidental. Your ultimate goal is space exploration. Personally I find building rockets tedious and unrewarding in ONI. YMMV, but I do recommend looking up videos of players launching rockets to see if you'll be happy puzzling through ONI's many complications to get to that endgame.

Love the game but watch out for a dupe named Stinky... liability

Yes just keep Mitty from pission all over the clean water supply.

Game so good i found myself playing until 5am the following day. 10/10 but i don't want to invest more time into this.

This game is kinda like if Fallout Shelter required some amount of skill. Having to manage so many resources (water, temperature, food, and yes, oxygen) can get overwhelming, but it's very rewarding when you're finally able to automate tasks, which frees up time for exploration. Things can go wrong at any time (and they will), and coming up with ways to delay your colony collapsing while you rush to fix it is always fun, and you end up learning tricks that ultimately make you much better at the game, especially on your future runs. I've put over 200 hours into this at the time of writing and there's so much I don't even know yet, which keeps me constantly coming back for more.

Easy to pick up, hard to master, and endlessly addictive if you enjoy colony management. As a casual base builder, I’ve found myself constantly experimenting and adjusting to resource shortages, which keeps the gameplay fresh and challenging. There’s a real sense of satisfaction in watching systems run smoothly—until they don’t.

It’s not beginner-hostile, but expect to make a lot of mistakes early on (and late game, if we’re honest).

Verdict: A chill chaos simulator with surprising depth. Highly recommend if you love designing functional messes that somehow work.

If you dig colony simulators, this game is definitely for you. I'm new to the genre and the learning curve is really steep, but I'm enjoying it so far. Pros: funny bordering on hilarious sometimes, dupes always finding fun and interesting new ways to end their own lives, funky comic sci-fi atmosphere and art. Cons: what do you mean I have to manage HEAT

You know that meme?
"You have 800 hours in this game?"
"Yes"
"So you must be good at it!"
*Cries*
Yeah, that's me. But I keep trying nonetheless, as this game is just fun to figure out the problems to. Even though I have never launched a rocket. Or built a volcano tamer. Or really any functional midgame build beyond a water purifying system for the bathrooms.... hmm. I AM the meme, huh? xD

This game is so addictive I physically wasn't able to play anything else for the first month after I bought it. I literally found myself dreaming about pipe configurations and resource management. 100 hours and I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. I've barely made it to the mid-game, and that's gloriously rare to find in a game these days. Can't wait to see where I'll get to in my next colon-
Goddammit has one of you trapped yourself on a ledge with unbreathable air again??
Sorry, gotta go help my morons.

very fun game but gets hard and complicated once you have a society set, would still recommend to others

Game is awesome and keeps bringing me back. it's not just some simple resource management sim, but far greater than that. if you like basebuilding and resource management this is right up your alley

One of my favorite games, this game fills every dream I had for a 2d colony builder. so much variety in how to play. Ive made and killed so many colonies and Im still here for more

I love this game! Building and improving your colony and all the duplicantes interactions are so cute! Highly reccommend

Really fun thinking game. It can be difficult at first but the more colonies you create the better the next ones will be.
One not is that you have to be really patient with some problems and also think some time ahead if something will resolve with issue. Also SO MANY CUTIES ANIMALS TO RANCH <3

This game is great for hardcore optimisation and planning nerds. Like me.

very good game a bit confusing at first but really good once you learn how to play

honestly just incredible. usually when i really lock in on a game i have a sort of love-hate relationship with it but i really just love ONI. aside from a bit of duplicant AI silliness it is truly a test of skill and almost every problem is avoidable. really hoping the game continues getting updates and DLC because i just want more of it

cute and simple at first, but progressively overwhelming as the game goes on.
10/10!

This game is great, even though it cartoonish, it is very complex with relatively scientific approaches required for cooling of the base as well as automation. If you liked factorio, satisfactory, or shapez2, you will probably like this game also.

77 hours in, and I have barely scratched the surface of this immense colony builder. As a programmer, this game hits home hard—designing blueprints, micromanaging resources, and watching for bottlenecks and potential faults genuinely feels like visual programming. Even at the surface level (where I am right now), it is unimaginably deep and vast.

I’ll be back at the 1,000-hour mark to praise the game in a more informed manner.

Kudos to the dev team—I have no idea how you pulled this off. It is I.N.S.A.N.E.

The game is amazing!!! If you want a grind-a-lot, adventure and survival game, then Oxygen not included is the right game. It starts you in an asteroid with the aim of surviving with limited resources, making it to the top of the asteroid and eventually successfully escaping from the asteroid. DLC gives you access to more content the l recommend you should purchase as well.

I have barely scratched the surface of this game. There are so many little things you can do and interact with. Gasses, liquids, and solids can all be interacted with and used. It may seem over whelming at first, but this game is certainly worth your time.

It gets pretty complicated, so I've never made it beyond certain technology limitations.
But the game is good.

This games tortures me in the best way. I enjoy every second playing it but it improves my life in no way. I have restarted and failed dozens of times yet continue playing it. If you think your brain is wired in a way where it needs to solve something before moving on, never play this game. 10 out of 10.

An absolute masterpiece of survival and colony management. Deep mechanics, awesome gas and liquid physics, endless ways to screw up — and even more ways to fix everything. It’s hard, it’s fun, and insanely addictive. Already spent hundreds of hours on PC — now just dreaming of the day I can finally play it on my phone. Take my money, Klei!

Amazing game where you can even learn real life physics!
Highly remomended for everyone who loves tech games. They are even great DLCs and QoL mods that expands gameplay and make it even better :)

Only minus is AI for dupes - they are kinda stupid and you may get frustrated when they don't do something for a long time or they get themself trapped in some deadly environment.

It needs a master in ingeneering to understand all the mechanics of this game, the learning curve is insane, but it's amazingly well done and has so much depth just like most of Klei's games. If you like the genre, just buy it !