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Oxygen Not Included is a space colony sim from Klei which produces another game I reviewed, Invisible, Inc. which can be seen here. I found it on steam, but only after watching Sacriel. It was released as early access on Steam May 2017, but I did not get to it until June.
These are the sort of games that remind me of my childhood drawing times. When I was young, a single page of paper, pencil and eraser was all I needed to keep me occupied for an hour. I would create a half submerged fortress. Then an terroristic force to take it out. Little by little the page would document laser or torpedo strikes and soon the end would come.
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Oxygen Not Included
So this game is one of those games that draws close to that time. You start out with three brave souls who are magically transported (but cant transport back?) to an underground facility. This is on an unknown planetoid/asteroid with unknown resources. You magic wand can do a multitude of things which you use to dig, gather resources, and make physical things. While this is going on, you also need to monitor the health of each person.
This is where I started to see the depth of this game. This is not just a health bar of life. We are talking a multitude of things to monitor. Health includes temperature, oxygen levels, hunger, stress, and overall comfort. To that end you can make beds, food machines, massagers, better food machines, lights, art and oxygen machines to name a few.
Life Experiences
Oh, and remember, they have to do number 2 as well. One cannot forget the bathroom. A simply outhouse to start, but then soon a bathroom. Bathroom needs plumbing. Both water in and water out and then it needs to go somewhere. As you progress, it gets more and more in depth. As more duplicants, that is the people in this simulator, are introduced, you need more and more food, water, and creature comforts. They react to each other in ways that you can not always predict. You may, at times, have to clean up pee or barf.
This progression is managed by a research process and you can take your time, or move as quickly as you want. It is determined on your levels of oxygen that you can produce. Each map in Oxygen Not Included is randomly (for the most part) generated and you have to manage your game based on the resources that you can see.
This might be in early access, but Klei is pretty good at being on top of things. A complete game that is already a lot of fun already exists here and they are adding lots of features on a pretty regular basis. There are a few bugs with getting your duplicants to do where you want them to, and the mapping of their travels sometimes needs some micromanagement, but this is what makes is kind of fun.
The trailer is linked below. What do you think? Please post your comments below and if you want to give it a try, use my steam link at the bottom. Cheers!
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