Oxygen Not Included

After enjoying Mind over Magic and people suggested I try out this game....
This game is crazy, it's so easy to get into, but insane just how difficult it is to master.
I didn't expect I'd be playing so much.
Great game, 100% recommend.

Oxygen Not Included teaches you one thing: managing space colonies is hard—especially when everyone’s starving, suffocating, and setting things on fire.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

I've played just a few hours *cough* at this point. At first the game can feel a bit overwhelming with whats being thrown your way. Learn from these challenges and reload if needs be. No shame in starting over or reloading. There are so many videos on youtube for builds or tips. I've had a few files reach 5000-8000 cycles at this point and always find it fun to go back to. It's a really fun game for anyone who likes games in general, however might tickle your fancy more if you're into colony sims, resource management, builders, etc. This one sneakily and in a entertaining way either reminds you of some of the basics science wise or flat out teaches you some if you weren't aware to begin with. I will never stop recommending this game and be excited for anyone about to start their path down their ONI addiction. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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.

Before buying, you should keep in mind that this game is not so easy as it looks. I would recommend that you be familiar with this type of games before playing. Because, the game requires you to manage a lot of things at the same time. (For example; from keeping the heat in adaquate levels to providing your colony with sustainability.) Even if you have played games like this before, you may have to play a lot of times before finally figure out how things work.
When I played the game for the first time, despite having played games like this, i couldn't get it and had to start over a lot of times which almost brought me to the point of quitting the game and uninstalling it. But this is I think what makes this game good and unique. It has its own challenges.

Now, time to talk about what this game is about. Simply, you're stuck inside an asteroid and try to reach the surface as quickly as possible. However it's not as easy as it looks. You must first discover the inside of the asteroid and expand your colony. I know this is a game review and not a game guide but this game really puts a great emphasis on being sustainable. If you are not sustainable (especially in early-mid game), it's a game over. Also, expanding aggressively and having more people than you can support may not the best thing to do. Simply "the more the merrier" doesn't work here. Which is something that makes this game unique among its kind.

By the way, the game has a sufficient amount of content so you can enjoy it for a long time. You may need 50-100 hours to finish depending on your gameplay. The game has a sandbox mode too.

To sum up, if you love difficulty, colony management, exploration and are ready to assume a lot of responsibility, this game is perfect for you! But you may be frustrated at first due to its complexity but once you get a grasp on it, it will be a very fun game to play.

Additionaly, it is worth the price!

If i were to rate it, i would give it 9/10

There are no raids, there are no major enemies, there is only entropy. This game is extremely complex under the hood. Gas management, temperature, water, etc. Your job is to manage the system and survive.

Entropy is the only enemy.

This game can pull you in like a physical force. You get so hooked by the cutesy graphics, that you wind up spinning far more plates then you realize, from there you will be racing to address one problem after another. Oh, I am running out of Oxygen. Wait, now everything it too hot, and plants aren't growing. This may not be for everyone, but it is very satisfying to dig into the mechanics, and things get quite deep.

Errands priorities breaks all the time. Your dupes will randomly decide they don't want to work when they should be working. They are worse than commies

This is head to head with Rimworld for my most played games.

It's a colony sim, but there's no external forces attacking you, you just have to survive in a harsh environment and build a nice home for your Dupes. This is very relaxing. Until you run out of essential resources needed for food or oxygen. Or you have to deal with a steam explosion. Or everything just melts. Or one of your idiots managed to trap themselves behind a wall they just built and suffocates. Or a combination thereof.

The art style and the animations are just lovely, especially the critters.

Klei regularly releases updates containing bug fixes, some new content and quality of life stuff. And right now, the third DLC is in the beta testing phase. The first DLC "Spaced Out!" adds quite a different endgame experience to the game, with many new mechanics. The second DLC "Frozen Planet Pack" is more like a new frozen environment, not actually changing the gameplay mechanics too much, but introducing a few new frozen biomes and critters.

I am in love with this game. help me, I cant stop playing, yesterday I started playing right after I woke up then the next thing i saw is, its already midnight. great game

Good game, with even better community.
e.g. take a look at my workshop items (iyi)

It's an interesting base building/survival game, just like Dwarf Fortress in space. Except these dupes don't die as easily as dwarves.
Gameplay is nice, and easy to navigate around. Fonts though are a bit small, so it is a bit tough to read it properly.

Can be complicated to learn, but a great base builder with lots of mechanisms

This is my highest played game by far (currently at 888 hours). If you enjoy trying to figure out different ways to craft complex systems, this might be your game. Then there is the fun of trying to remove that one tile of CO2 that a dupe put into your perfectly vacuumed out room you thought was protected by an atmo suit.

This game is so incredibly adorable as well as supremely complex. having to deal with pressure, heat and oxygen is hard but so gratifying to get right. I have loved refining my base layouts so that my dupes can live their best lives!

Not gonna lie, I only played this game because it was free at one point. Before I knew it, 7 hours went by. I bought the game. I love this game. The height in depth to this game really has me in a choke hold. Going into Automation made me doubtful but once i got some pointers from youtube I was set.

Attempt 1. Goes well until food becomes scarce. Everyone dies. Attempt 2. Everyone is well fed but focused too much on digging and not enough on oxygen, everyone dies again. Attempt 3. Made it over 80 cycles then realized all my crops are too hot to keep growing, everyone starves quickly because all nearby creatures died of old age. Attempt 4. All their needs are met but they could not be protected from their own stupidity. One guy decides to sleep in the magma level, starts dying. Another guy goes to retrieve the dying one, also starts dying, and that continues until everyone is dead. Lesson learned, don't walk away without pausing. Attempt 5. Made it over 100 cycles and no one dies but everyone experiences blackouts due to my inability to manage an actual surviving colony until now.

its a base building game with focus on survival. the greatest challenge is how to manage resources with oxygen being one of the things that will kill everyone if managed poorly. the game starts easy but gets exponentially hard as resources are consumed and you need to find ways to replace them.

great game with small entry barrier of requiring a phd in engineering, physics and chemistry

A game that makes you feel really smart and really dumb at the same time.

It deserves all the love it gets. It's the only colony sim game that has so much depth paired with cute graphics. Absolutely worth the price for the endless replayability it offers. Plus, the devs keep coming back to add more free content since 2019, so there's new ways to play the game every year.

the game mixes fun with constantly being paranoid about your dupe's stress and honestly its kinda fun

A great base building game that is actually supported by the developer. Just remember that dupes are not smart and the physics of the game sometimes contradicts the real world 😉

Amazingly addictive. Definitely play two or three games too at least turn 100 before looking up tutorials on Youtube. It will give you more satisfaction as you progress. Don't feel the need to take a dupe every time you have the choice. Sometimes food and resources are a better choice!

The game fits nicely into a specific niche of players who like complicated technology trees where every single building and upgrade is linked to another building or upgrade and affects the entire flow of your space colony. This is its greatest strength.

That said, it is also its greatest weakness. Playing the game is an exercise in how much you can memorize said technology tree. Once you feel like you've got a decent understanding of your current buildings, some unknown factor that you haven't studied or encountered is going to cause problems. While that seems exciting and makes the game seem more fun, it only makes it so that you have to study the game more. And yes, by study I mean STUDY. Which goes where? What does this thing do? How can I do X, Y, and Z?

Oh, and there's no tutorial other than small and lengthy walls of text filled with names and numbers that only increase the mental struggle rather than ease it.

If you thought Civilization had a steep learning curve, Oxygen Not Included is ten times steeper. After taking my time learning about 15% of the game's different rules and buildings and noticing I had quite a long way to go before I get a good grasp of the mechanics, I finally decided to call it quits. I play games to take a break from work, and Oxygen Not Included was beginning to feel like work after several hours.

Bought and refunded after an hour. I wanted to enjoy this game but the immediate realization of the HUGE amount of information presented right at the start was too overwhelming. I don't have an engineer brain and don't see myself spending hours learning before having fun. The game doesn't clearly explain how to do some things and you have to look up a lot of tutorials.

Great colony sim, endearing art style. You can make it as simple or complex as you want with plenty of mods, settings and guides ( I do recommend going in blind at first though).

I played thousand of games and this is one of the best i´ve ever played.
I could write a book about the positive aspects of the game.
Thank you very much Klei for the 1000+ hours. Hope you will release more DLC´s for ONI in the future and
please add more / different / random generated Asteroids that can be visited with spaceships/teleporter to the game!

pretty good game i love it ,i'd be honest it get complicated with time but if there's o challenges it's no fun may possibility and responsiblity to take care of it's amazing

Love it! I admit it is challenging to make sure you don't drown, starve, or suffocate your little peeps but bless their sweet hearts. Had to buy the full version of it after 20 binge hours of game play! 3 am came way to quick when you are busy avoiding toxic gas and starvation. Although mud nutrient bars how sad......

Oxygen Not Included is great game.

Oxygen Not Included has much more science and complicated mechanics than most other games do. When playing, you often end up having to make many calculations and it's a good workout for the brain. But it's also really fun at the same time.

However, my favorite thing about it is the duplicants. They talk to each other and react to the things around them, and each have their own names and personalities. It's interesting that besides just giving them food and More.

Love it and still going strong with all the new content.

good:

* Well woven together game mechanics with a lot of interactive depth
* Visuals that manage to be both easy to read when you're playing and aesthetically pleasing if you take a step back
* Regular updates with consistently high quality

bad:

* somewhat of a steep learning curve, with aspects that aren't intuitive and you'll have to look up online to understand
* some mechanics are very easy to cheat at once you realize it's possible (like deleting heat by pumping high-heat oxygen into an electrolyzer) , and you have to deliberately ignore some of those easy cheats if you want the game to be fun

There is a robust modding community, but unfortunately, the developer, Klei, has no respect for the modding community nor players who enjoy playing with mods. Each update completely breaks mods, and even rolling back to a previous version entails multiple hours of attempting to enable mods one at a time. As with most games that utilize mods, it is the mods and the developers of mods that enhance the base game. Klei seems intent on forcing players to play the game the way the envision, and thus, seem to purposefully inject code in the updates that will break and disable mods.
If you are a player that never plays with mods, then you'll enjoy the base game and the multiple DLCs, which will cost you additional purchases.
If you are a player that enjoys mods, don't waste your money or time, as you'll be continually frustrated at the shenanigans of the a$$hole developers.

This game is like the Dark Souls of The Sims franchise.

It’s far from easy—there are countless mechanics to grasp before you can truly progress. However, once you’ve mastered the complexities and overcome the challenging situations, the sense of accomplishment is incredibly rewarding, and the fun really begins.

A truly outstanding game!

I love games that make me find new solutions to on-going issues. There are multiple ways to fix the systems in this game and out of all the colony sims ive played this one has to be the best.

It is a fun game to explore,build, and dig. There are many intresting critters and mechanics that other games do not have like being able to control how many animals you have and getting free stuff that you want in the portal and controlling what your duplicants do. Oxygen NOT Included is a really fun game ( :

ive been really excited to play this game, and honestly its way too complicated to be fun. (there is just too many systems that you have to learn and figure out for the very basic functions of the game. its honestly way to overwhelming to be a casual fun game.)
Im sure it get better 100 hours of gameplay, but honestly its a slog to try to understand some of the most basic systems, half the stuff doesn't work out of the box and requires 5 different steps to get one basic amenity going.. starting one thing unlocks 12 more things that need to be done before that one thing can be completed. it started out fun, but gets extremely complicated way too quickly with very few explanation, and constant jumping through hoops to make very small accomplishments. If it doesnt refund i might try it again.
but i feel like i need to take 10 years of science and technologies to understand the very basic mechanics of this game.
just a big fat grind fest overall.
not a causal game in the slightest.

Do not let the "cute" aestetics fool you, this is a complex and sometimes difficult game that plays like a combo of factorio and rimworld with a touch of dwarf fortress.
They have lowered the difficulty a bit, so you wont randomly fail due to disease and tantrum spirals any more. Perhaps there is a way to up the difficulty in the settings but i'm ok with not loosing weeks of build due to letting a door stand open in a corner of the base somewhere :)

On the difficulty: I am now almost 800h in and have finished ONE colony in the base game and am about to start launching rockets on the second. I have bought the DLC's but not yet started _any_ colonies other than in the base game.
After 800h i find the game fairly easy, but still enjoy solving and automating complex problems of resource balance and throughput, so it's pretty great value for money!

This game.... if your looking for something to sink 400+ hours after which you'll realise you no nothing and have been doing it all wrong... then ONI is for you. Welcome to the club.

At first it's tough. You need to meticulously navigate through the different challenges of babysitting, heating, cooling and managing your pipes, but as you slowly progress along the game, you get to celebrate at some breakthroughs you can make.

Very Logical game as games about duplicants in space go. Makes good use of digital electronic engineering and is a great problem solving game. Well worth the time learning.

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.

Oxygen Not Included Review: A Cozy, Engaging Puzzle of Survival

Oxygen Not Included (ONI) is a game that brilliantly balances complexity and relaxation in a way that feels both nostalgic and fresh. It reminds me of the serene-yet-strategic rhythm of old Civilization games or classic RTS titles, where every move you make feels meaningful and satisfying. From the moment you dig out your first few tiles, ONI draws you into a living, breathing world where every system—whether it’s oxygen production, temperature control, or plumbing—feeds into another, creating a delicate web of survival.

What makes ONI truly remarkable is how it keeps the stakes high without feeling stressful. Your duplicants (adorably quirky colonists) require constant care, but the game gives you the time and tools to solve each problem at your own pace. Whether you’re figuring out how to deal with polluted water or optimizing your power grid, every challenge feels like a rewarding puzzle. And yet, it’s never overwhelming; the soothing art style, cheerful duplicant animations, and quirky sound effects make even disasters feel strangely endearing.

Much like Civilization, ONI taps into that addictive “one more turn” energy, though here it’s more like “just one more cycle.” You’ll find yourself tweaking layouts, refining systems, and dreaming of the perfect base design long after you meant to log off. It’s also deeply strategic—managing resources, planning ahead for crises, and keeping your duplicants happy feels as engaging as managing armies or building wonders in Civ.

There’s also a creative freedom in ONI that echoes the best sandbox experiences. Do you want to create a sprawling, multi-level utopia with every duplicant living in perfect harmony? Or do you embrace the chaos, watching as things (inevitably) go hilariously wrong? The game doesn’t punish you for failure; instead, it encourages experimentation and learning, making every playthrough unique and personal.

If you’ve ever loved the careful planning of Civilization or the satisfying micromanagement of a classic RTS, Oxygen Not Included is a must-play. It’s a game that feels like home for strategy enthusiasts—a warm, delightful world where every challenge is as satisfying as the solution.

Definitely recommend this game for those that like to build. I've gotten pretty hooked on this. The art is very cute, but the building is really complicated. The colony are like taking care of kids. Its really hard to build a thriving colony. I have never gotten pass 15 people in my group. It was harder than I thought. I have no idea how many times I've had to restart, but it's still a good game, if you have the time to just build.

Yo this is definitely a fun game to play. Just some advice for beginners, manual generators are way better than you'd think. Get someone to power your systems during the night! Once you can get a hydrogen power system, or solar power system then you can replace all the manual generators.
Also, when your in the mid-game, <150 days, you should think about having duplicant zones, have some of them work at the center, some at the surface, and some nearby oil.

Excellent game. I cannot stop playing. great support and community out there. I highly recommend this game to anyone.

Excellently balanced game! Deeply enjoyable for a working adult, without requiring hundreds of hours to commit.

10/10 game
it gave me a superiority complex. This game is enjoyable yet very stressful at the same time. At some point I became numb to their deaths, they kinda deserved it anyways.

over 200 hours, still intimidated by rockets. 10/10

I have sunk 400+ hours into this game, several dozen colonies, and by some miracle that I'm still not entirely grasping... my current play through as of writing this has had a colony survive to 1000+ cycles. Food shortages, runaway heating, collapse of oxygen production. Been hit by it all and somehow, someway, my duplicants survive.

For the game itself, though, it has a rather well perfect difficulty. The environment itself is both a threat and bounty for the colony to tame and grow. And the greatest threat is actually you the player. Something that a lot of other colony sims don't really capitalize on. Your mistakes can sneak up on you, like placing a high heat producing structure in one area that at first seems sensible due to the low ambient temperature and then a few dozen days later and your sleeping area is being flooded out or your crops are all wilting from overheating. And then your scrambling to try and fix things, either by trying to pump heat away from an area or rebuild things in a cooler location. Or the wonderful nightmare of uncovering a volcano and having to live with the consequences of that action. And it's all handled in a way that just keeps you wanting more.

This game is very difficult but very fun, I highly recommend it.