Oxygen Not Included

I don't understand why this so called game has positive reviews. Have people lost their minds? This is way to complex to be a game. It is literally easier to wake up in the morning, go to work, and pay the bills than to spend time running this thing. It is probably easier to go through chemo while writing a PhD thesis and living out of your car. When you buy a sim, you expect to spend time relaxing instead of playing shooters. ONI simply does not live up to this expectation. You will find yourself spending too much time watching guides and tutorials to try and figure out how to run this nightmare.

good game for a casual play, the instructions for a new player are really bad but you can find information in youtube or reddit about how to do the most of the things

TL;DR Fun but very frustrating

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. The graphics are charming, the main gameplay loop is good, there's plenty to do... but... at a certain point, relatively early in a game, it gets INSANELY complicated.

This is not a game you can sit and learn by yourself. You will absolutely have to spend hours on forums looking up how to get most things done. Once you get to the point of needing glass and plastics, there's no easy way to produce them.

Keeping your people (dupes) alive is relatively easy. The first few hours of a new colony are super fun. The problem is that once you get to the point that basic needs are covered and it's time to expand and explore, the difficulty goes through the roof and it's easy to lose all motivation to continue.

I get that this level of challenge and micromanagement appeals to many, I'm just not that person. Once you get to the point that you need to consider what material to use when constructing heat extraction pipes and you're required to balance the right amount of hydrogen on the ceiling of a room while keeping adequate oxygen on the floor, it's just too much.

As a new player, it's too difficult to even know what the next step is, even with hours spent pouring over forums.

Some kind of difficulty setting or mod that helps simplify the massive complexities would make this game an easy 9 out of 10, at least for new players.

Absolutely amazing. It's too complicated for my little brain but I don't need to know what's happening to have fun.

Wait, I haven't reviewed this?
Um. *looks at play time*
I guess I've been busy.
Alright. So. This game is kind of insane. It's a tile based physics simulator dressed up as a colony sim. You'll start with questions like "how do I keep my colonists from peeing in my water reservoir" and end up with questions like "how do I exploit the game-physics to build a powerless water-pump that ignores 'normal' pressure limits to move oil uphill in my petroleum boiler". Along the way, have fun learning about thermodynamics.

It's basically porn for extra-autistic engineers. Ie, me.

Make no mistake: the game looks very cute and fun but it is a butal resource-management game where you'll have to deal with multiple problems at once, on top of being painfully aware that air will run out in 30 cycles, crops will be overheated in 74 cycles and 3 of your colonists will have a mental breakdown in 2 cycles if you don't get moving

I build bathrooms for the dupes, they, still, pee everywhere except the beautiful bathrooms I made them. I tried putting my water reservoir closed and away, but they always found a way to go pee in it contaminating all of the fresh water.

Other than this, it was a great experience, and i really enjoyed playing it.

P.S.: Before when I mentioned "dupes" I meant, Max, it was always Max who peed everywhere. I hate you Max.

This game is slightly addicting, though can be tough to get into. It's all about figuring out and jury rigging your own solutions for survival. I love it and continuously come back to play it again and again.

666 hours, Guess I better get around to a review.

It's a fun and engaging game with a dev team that never took a day off or half-assed a thing out the door. They have always listened to the community and I would recommend any game they produce in the past or in the future.

Moderate recommendation, it has some cool mechanics.

Things to note before you buy:
- The electricity system is not fun
- You can't build a self sustaining colony, resources are limited so there's always a death clock running in the background.
- a lot of resources you'd assume would be renewable are in fact not
- you have limited ability to control gas and temperature despite that being very important

.

I take a break for a few months, but keep coming back. the DLC's are fun, the random updates are fun, the workshop always has fun new items. It is such a great game, get it, you will not regret it!

Great game for builders who want to find a sandbox game and control a mini-civilisation in SPACE!

Oxygen Not Included? More like Sanity Not Included.
I tried to build a utopia, but my duplicants decided to pee in the water supply. Now they’re starving, suffocating, and somehow still smiling. 10/10, would watch my colony descend into madness again.

An expertly crafted colony simulator that pulls from real science, thermodynamics, and biology for an experience truly unmatched in its genre. Match that with the amazing art and sound design Klei is known for, and you have a package that I would not hesitate to call a must-play for anyone who enjoys colony builders, math, or finding creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems

It is fun, creative and strategic. The music is such a vibe and the art style brings comfort and fun to the game.

This game does a great job of "game-afying" typical engineering challenges that we take for granted.
Every input has an output, and you need to be really intelligent with how you deal with waste and harnessing resources.
Really satisfying base building and colony sims, one of the best out there for sure.

this is the best game ive played in a while, its fun to figure out how to keep the little weirdos alive for the longest you can and i enjoy it :3

At first start there is a bit of a steep learning curve. The tutorial comes at you fairly quick and at the end of the day, you only really can grasp the basics.

At its core, Oxygen Not Included is a strenuous game, but WILDLY addicting. For starting out, I would suggest to keep your duplicate count low, (no more than 5-7), for early game. You'll find your resource management much easier to handle.

Otherwise, explore! Don't be afraid to google something. I am at about 5 hours and am sloooowly just starting to understand the plumbing mechanics - so it takes time.

It is the best singleplayer "scientific" game, it is very entertaining, you can spend your hours happily, the DLCs that are available at these prices are great, adding other content to the game. All they need to do is add multiplayer to space out, it would be great to manage different planets with a friend.

This scratches all the colony survival itches especially with the DLC there is sooo much to do a very well polished game. Got my brain feeling really smooth gotta get those wrinkles!

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.

played it off family sharing, just bought it now, so checking the free box. Absolutely wonderful little colony simulation, plays much more off survival than expansionism from what I've seen, which i greatly enjoy.

Good game - if u need some survival challenge or play about 15h or few times, its more roguelike game.

Bad game - if u need some chillout colony builder, its too hard to balance all resources to survive without pushing, digging. It hasnt so much freedom like Rimworld,

Strikes a good balance with colony sim, difficulty and casual gameplay.

Good:
- Graphics
- Vibe
- Scratches the "keep on expanding!" itch very well
- Fairly intuitive
- Upgrading, sidegrading, redesigning is very easy and thus effortless

Bad:
- Some things are not explained very well
- No way to filter out alerts (I keep having "flooding building" because a building that's not mine got flooded when it thawed)
- sometimes the cacophony of sounds is slightly jarring


9/10!

Super fun base building game. Some of your little guys will die horribly to poison gas or lava, but it's not a big deal, look at how much fun they are having!

The only drawback to this game is that if you aren't an engineer in real life, you will need to look up and steal other people's designs to progress. I'm sorry I wasn't able to come up with a system to liquefy hydrogen on my own.

One of my favorite games to go back to every time. Just like Don't starve. Although oxygen not included requires quite a lot of brain power to enjoy.

I was really excited to finally play this, but it's overly complex and not very easy to learn. I got kind of bored and overwhelmed with all there is to do. There's a point where management stops being any kind of fun and the cuteness of the game doesn't save it. I normally love games like this, but I think this was too much of a muchness, if that makes sense? xD

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.

130 hours in, 6 restarts, and I just unlocked Carnivore on my to be 100% playthrough. I have not reached space and don't think I will for the next 200 hours. I've only begun digging to the bottom of my maps to learn about volcanoes and oil.

There are multiple systems that are intricately tied to each other that require monitoring and managing. The game gives you tools to solve problems that come your way, but no fixed way to do so. Your solution will be yours and yours alone. Sure there are SPOMs and Steam Vent Aquatuners and builds that people default to, but there is so much experimentation in this game that it's a drop in the lake of things you'll build in the game. You will lose and you will learn. But unlike a souls-like, the ceiling for this game is knowledge, not skill. And that is amazing.

Good luck managing your future colony of idiots.

Oxygen Not Included is a brilliantly designed colony management sim with unparalleled depth. The simulated physics of gases and liquids creates uniquely challenging gameplay as you watch oxygen diffuse, liquids find their level, and heat transfer through materials - scratching that science nerd itch like no other game. Managing your quirky duplicants while engineering complex systems offers hundreds of addictive hours where creative solutions spawn fascinating new problems. A masterpiece that rewards ingenuity and methodical thinking.

This is not a game about the surviving of a small colony or anything.
It is a simulator of how someone(dupe) can kill themselfs in the most stupid/creativ way possible.
It`s a great game. 10/10 would recommend

This is a great comfort game especially since you can pick it up and put it down when you have time to play

Fun game but what sadly killed it for me is that I have to constantly babysit the muppets otherwise they lock themselfes outside the base when building, dig the only pathway back, all leading to them suffocating or drowning when i don't look at them for 5 seconds.

First time played this game i thought it would be a normal simulator game,now 140 hours deep in and i still don't even know what the heck im doing ??? (This is a whole new learning subject for you to torture urself)

This game is so dang technical. I feel like a moron trying to play it some times lol. I always think I'm doing something right, until it breaks or kills my dupes. Even tutorials online don't do some of the operations justice.

I do love this game though. I wouldn't want it any other way. There's a learning curve to it, but its this kind of depth that I love in a game. I've had this game for years, but only recently really tried to get into it. It's probably the most unique game I've played in quite some time.

While I feel like it can be a never-ending grind where all you do is loop the same resources, but I also know that I'm not doing everything I can to get to that end game. Like I said, there's a learning curve that you have to get past. Once you do, this game is kinda god tier in its own way.

8/10 Would recommend, but with some discretion.

I love this game because you can really connect with the characters. They are almost fully automated, providing for themselves while you watch and plan to build a big base. I love Don't Starve's style, and having that same style in a space-themed resource management game is an awesome win!

greatest base building game ever made, elaborate skill tree and player freedom.

Great game, just completed the base game. Tough and unforgiving but very well made and satisfying. It's surprisingly accurate from a technical and engineering perspective. Not many players have finished it (1.4%) so prepare to get punished.

This game is excellent at helping players learn to prioritize and plan out strategies with what is given. Its quite fun and enjoyable, especially with mods.

There is no other game like this in the market right now with deep mechanics, such as, logic gate systems, thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. Just don't expect the mechanics to mirror the real world to a t.

The game is fun until you start to memorize the freezing point of chlorine.

Short: While highly rated and indeed a game that keeps you going again and again, it still leaves me with a unsatisfied and unhappy feeling each time, each new run.

The physics simulation is awesome and the terror to manage colony temperature levels give you a wonderful example what terrible fate us awaits with climate change.

But thats, it. I always, each time run into the issue of terrible balancing of the game where its impossible to create a really stable environment, even with cheats i always run into the issue of something not staying in the required temperature range or if so then CO2 polution, or low energy.

Where most asteroids have totally useless gysiers or im just missing one more natural gas gysier to get my energy grid stable.

The moment i use oil for power the CO2 levels and heat just kill the game because at that point i have to pump so much gas and liquids into space to get rid of polution and heat, that the game simply slows down too much.

There isnt even any fun in building rockets and in space on the surface of the asteroid because when you are there you are constantly boged down by adjusting the temp of the crops for example, when you thought the automation grid would well...automatically start the liquid cooling.

Yes its a fun game and really binds you and thats totally cool....but still EACH TIME the feeling in the end is unhappy, annoyed and frustrated.

The Idea with radioactivity in the DLC is nice...but its again in no way balanced and just pushed into the game.

I dont know...a game can be totally fun the whole time but what counts is how you feel at the end. If it leaves you feeling frustrated at the end it just feels like wasted time.

Oxygen Not Included is an addicting, beautifully designed survival colony sim where every decision matters. The best part? Exploration. Every time I expand my base into unknown areas, discovering new biomes and resources, it still feels exciting—even after multiple playthroughs.

The game is all about managing systems: oxygen, food, power, heat. Food is laughably easy to sustain, oxygen is manageable as long as you handle heat, but power and heat? Those are the real nightmares. Power is a ticking time bomb—if you don’t set up sustainable gridlines, you’re doomed. But heat? Heat is the problem of the entire game. You have to build around it, invest in it, research it... it feels like the central mechanic because everything else is easier in comparison. Maybe I’m just bad at handling it, but from the moment I start a new colony, I already know I’ll be battling heat forever.

Difficulty-wise, the game starts simple but gets harder the longer you play, which is great. But the biggest issue? Purpose. What am I working toward? Expanding is fun, but why am I doing it? Eventually, you solve most of the game’s problems except heat, and at that point, you’re just existing. A strong endgame challenge or more reasons to keep growing would really help.

Duplicant management is a bit frustrating—there’s a lot of depth, but movement inefficiency makes things painful. Watching them take absurd walking routes or waste time is the most aggravating part of the game. I’d love a co-op mode, like Stellaris, where multiple players could work on the same colony. That would make the mid-to-late game way more engaging.

Overall, Oxygen Not Included is a fantastic, well-balanced game with great visuals and mechanics, but it suffers from a lack of long-term purpose. It’s at its best when you have pressing goals, but once those problems fade, it loses momentum. Still, it’s absolutely worth playing, and if you love colony management, this is one of the best out there.

8/10 – Amazing design, but give me more reasons to keep going!

Its a fun colony builder. super challenging and complex

cool economic simulator, like dwarf fortress, factorio etc
u need to manage resourses and manage quantity of dupes, recomend

As a pretty hardcore gamer (hours not skill) i'd say oxygen not included is one of my fave games of all time... for me its up there with sims, minecraft, banished, anno, age of empires etc... i love the science and the mods... so fun and DLCs are fab! great work and now i have a better computer i can finally do the game some justice!

Es un juego más complejo de lo que parece a simple vista. Lean todo lo que aparece en pantalla, toda la información es clave para poder sobrevivir.

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.

Probably the best base building game I've played.
For me this is more fun than stuff like Rimworld as it's more of a sandbox rather than having artificial events pushing the gameplay, the things that drive the gameplay are the in-game systems. It shows how well balanced and interesting the systems are that all my hours in this game so far are on a single save. I think I'm fairly close to the end game at this point but tbh it's fun to just tinker with stuff, there's no particular hurry to finish.

As the game unfolds you get different phases where you'll have a particular problem you're trying to solve. These can range from pretty simple things like having food, toilets and building materials but as time passes all of your actions have side effects - breathing uses up oxygen and makes unbreathable Co2 which then starts to clog up your base so you have 2 new problems that need solving without even doing anything - getting rid of Co2 and getting more oxygen! The same applies to toilets - they produce waste products and sinks need water but produce dirty water which again you need to handle the waste and deal with getting more of the useful stuff. These engineering problems often have simple short term solutions but need more complex fixes to make sustainable systems and the game is basically solving these problems until you get new problems! You then end up having to refactor your early heath-robinson solutions when you get better technology and have available time. The late game becomes about trying to do goals that the game has set for you - launching rockets and building a massive statue! That's the bit I'm playing at the moment but I'm currently sidetracked with a big mining/refactoring project as my base is basically a maze of little rooms and the dupes spend too much time running about rather than actually getting work done so I'm moving stuff out of the way to put in a big central corridor and hopefully get some transit tubes in. I'm also considering partitioning it so that rather than having everyone in the same spot it effectively becomes several smaller bases with more specialist purposes and some automated conveyors to move stuff around.

I've never really played anything like this before, clearly it's in the colony sim genre but IMO it's such an original take that's is basically out there on its own. It's far more interesting and complex than the systems in Rimworld but actually well put together unlike Dwarf fortress. The automation is complex but makes sense and works without adding dodgy scripting languages - it's all components that operate in the world and can mostly be understood without reference to a wiki (having said that I am a programmer so your mileage may vary), unlike the mad (and practically indecipherable) stuff you get in mindustry (which is a great game tbf but I didn't find trying to use automation to control things in it fun, it just felt tedious).

It's really refreshing to play a game that isn't about combat/killing stuff as well!