Review - Oxygen Not Included

You show up deep underground in the bowels of an asteroid. You don’t know how you got there, but you at least know one thing: the air is getting pretty stale. Oxygen Not Included is the latest game from Klei Entertainment, the same people who made Don’t Starve. The player is put in control of a bunch of duplicants who have to try to survive in an underground cavern.
This is a colony management game at its core. The player has to work out providing food, housing, and oxygen for all of the members of the colony. Akin to similar games like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress, colony members are both autonomous and often suffer from the stresses of survival. The player can change what jobs a specific duplicant can do, but they cannot force a duplicant to do anything but move to a particular area.
What Oxygen Not Included really brings to the table is its fluid mechanics, specifically focusing on air movement. A good chunk of the player’s effort will be taken up by creating oxygen for duplicants to breath and disposing of carbon dioxide that they expel. Oxygen rises to the tops of caverns whereas carbon dioxide falls towards the floor. This simple rule dictates how a colony has to be built. Verticality is key to diffusing oxygen properly and allowing carbon dioxide to not pool up in high traffic areas. The air movement worked really well throughout all that I played and, as I mentioned prior, it is good enough to become a central issue that the player has to deal with.
Beyond the air movement, Oxygen Not Included is pretty similar to other colony building games. The player continually expands as new members are teleported into the colony, constantly trying to stay one step ahead in the race for survival. Unlike other colony builders, Oxygen Not Included does not seem to be the type of game that creates colonies that can survive forever. It seems that this game focuses more on seeing how long one can survive (with the very present expectation of dying) rather than creating a perfect, unending colony. That is certainly an interesting difference, but I’m not completely sold on it. If Klei is not expecting to see unending colonies, it would be better to create a goal for the player to work towards in the game.
Another key difference between Oxygen Not Included and other colony management games is that the map has distinct biomes. It is not unusual for an over-world (like the ones seen in Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress) to have biomes, but usually the play areas consists of only one type of area. Oxygen Not Included has at least four distinct biomes that each offer different resources that the player will need to survive. As would be expected, some are more dangerous than others with both environmental and creature hazards threatening colony survival. The biomes do add another layer of strategy to the game, as the player can only survive in their safe starting biome for so long. At some point, one has to decide which poison they’ll choose to take.
It must be noted that Oxygen Not Included is currently in early access, so it is possible that a goal will be added to the game. While they have said that they will be “exploring the lore of the game, slowly uncovering the history,” this doesn’t necessarily mean that anything outside of survival will be set as a goal. It does, however, note that the story, which is currently severely lacking, will be addressed in the future. Hopefully they can infuse some level of nuance into the lore behind this game.
As an early access title, this game has a lot of potential. The core mechanics are working surprisingly well. I’ve only had one pathfinding bug that was fixed by commanding the duplicant to move. Beyond that, there are only a couple issues with duplicants hauling tiny amounts of resources. Oxygen Not Included is surprisingly well polished and ready for play at this early hour.
Overall, Oxygen Not Included is worth checking out. I wouldn’t say that it is the sort of game that anyone should run to pick up. It would likely be worth waiting a few more updates until more content is in the game. Given their track record with Don’t Starve, I have no doubt that those updates will come. If you’re really interested, go for it.

Klei Entertainment, Oxygen Not Included. Klei Entertainment, May 18, 2017.

Video Review


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