Oxygen Not Included Reviews

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!

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.

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.

This game is amazing. I applaud the people that made this. However this is a game where you're constantly running from rather than running to. Running from lack of oxygen. Lack of water. Too much heat. Not enough metal for wires. And the problem is as you run further and further from those issues, you find your duplicants become this blob of slow worthless shit. And the solutions to pre-existing problems become their own problems which you also have to start running from. I honestly feel like this is the perfect game to teach the consequences of consumption. It teaches you everything has a cost, and just because you don't see it right now doesn't mean you won't pay for it later in a big way. Unfortunately, that's just not very fun for me. I keep waiting for when my base is finally set up so I can focus on the fun stuff! And then I get to solve for heat instead, and Billy just jumped in the fucking 80* crude oil again and is dying, and Sally just chose to build herself inside the wall and can't move and pissed herself so I guess I have to mop that up. What the fuck is wrong with you Sally? And then it's 2am and you're like... why the fuck am I cleaning up Sally's piss??? STOP PICKING UP SHIT IN THE OIL THAT BURNS YOU BOB WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU??????? You get the idea.

This game lacks a strong tutorial on how to play. I've gotten 100 days into a game just to have zero idea on how to change my power supply to something other then coal which i eventually run out of. This same cycle of death has happen to me multiple times. This game has a very high learning curve.

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!

I have many hours in this game and I feel like I've only scratched the surface - figuratively, as I still haven't come anywhere close to reaching space. This game is HARD but really quite gratifying when you finally figure something out. Highly recommend if you want something to get your brain working (and don't mind getting frequently frustrated - because, trust me, you will).

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!

A really solid game overall, I really enjoy it. However, I only bought it because they promised, [i]"All future updates will be free, no more DLC"[/i]. 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.

If you think about working or studying in the field of engeneering, try out this game. Sleepless nights, stress, hatetred and other negative emotions will come up and will be instantly washed away, once a system you copied from youtube actually starts to work and pushes your demise away for another 100 cycles