Watching their faces as they work is a hoot by the way.ĭirectly below the printer I put my machines. If you look off to the left of the main area we have our toilet. As you assign jobs, the duplicants go about working as they see fit. You get a new duplicant (again you get to pick!) every three days or so. The big archway is, of course, the duplicant printer. We’re surrounded by pockets of poison gasses like chlorine. Almost all the nearby pockets are oxygen, water, and vacuum. We lucked out here with a couple of nice pockets of oxygen nearby. With kind of vacuum sucker-shooter things. But the gases flow, and since oxygen rises, I decided to build my beds at the top of my base. Not all pockets have oxygen, some are filled with dangerous chemicals or are merely vacuums. Basically, the blueish air is oxygen that you can breathe. Once your three people are available you start digging. You start out with three Duplicants that are “printed” … you know there’s a story there, right!? The fun bit is they have stats and traits – kind of like the colonists in Rimworld. It’s still pretty complex for an incomplete game, but of course, like any game in development, the bugs and kinks are still being worked out.
But this is perhaps my favorite type of game, a base-builder! 2-D style similar to Craft the World, only with ‘Duplicants’ on an alien world opposed to dwarves underground. Created by the same folks who made Don’t Starve, it’s got a similar graphic style.
OXYGEN NOT INCLUDED REVIEW PLUS
As it is, I can see the long-term frustration inherent to its core premise turning folks off, but I also appreciate the thought and craftsmanship that’s gone into making even surviving to 100 days plus possible without resorting to “Eh, this thing just makes the air cooler/adds oxygen/just removes a need” to this point.It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a game. Overall, I look forward to seeing where Oxygen Not Included goes, because when it comes to survival games, you can’t really top this in terms of challenge without becoming deeply unfair and unfun. There’s more, obviously, but I want at least some mystery for the new player. The Slimepuff, which can make slime in areas of polluted oxygen… Whether you want them to or not. The simple Hatch, which can be useful for their ability to eat things and poop coal, but will also, unchecked, eat the food destined for your colonist’s bellies. Brains in jars, that give your Duplicants new or improved skills, providing you find them.
Vending machines, with notices not to put harmful materials in. Offices, isolated in the middle of this asteroid in nowhere. Right now, there isn’t an end-goal to the game, although there are tantalising hints and things to be discovered. Not Pictured: Me panicking as I realise I’m going to run out of Algae *and* Hydrogen before I can build and power a Slime to Algae Converter. Not the exact bottom, you understand… I have to have somewhere the CO2’s going to… Oh wait, now I need to dig down. I highly expect, by the time I get to day 50, that I’ll have to build an oxygen pump at the top of my base, running a heat dissipating pipe through several areas I don’t care about (but will have to dig through and survive), before finally pumping that good, and most importantly, cooler air near the bottom of my base. Heck, everything has to be chosen wisely, and, as I’ve mentioned, the further you get, the bigger the scale of the things you have to do, to deal with the buildup of problems over time. And, because Duplicants have flaws like consuming more oxygen than their compatriots, having a weak bladder, farting a lot… You have to choose your Duplicants wisely, as well. And sure, more people will mean more gets done, but more people also means more CO2 generated.
Because, of course, all of these actions, from growing to laying pipes to manning fans and giant hamster wheels, take time.
It is, perhaps, the first game I’ve come across where it becomes more complicated the more established you are. And so it goes, on and on until you’re trying to displace all the waste heat your generators and de-oxidisers and wires and pipes are making. Wait, crap, you forgot about the carbon dioxide buildup, got to put that somewhere… And the poop. Algae to run those de-oxidisers, and dirt and more water for research. Electricity to power de-oxidisers and research stations. In any case, the basic idea is very simple: You start with three “Duplicants” (clones, basically), stranded mysteriously by a teleporting gate (that also, periodically, is able to “print” new Duplicants.) They start with a ration box, and a small room that has some oxygen, and from there? Well, everything. When Digging Out Water-Pools Backfires Horribly, a TMW Special.