Oxygen not included biomes full#
That chamber’s full of chlorine, so the dupes are having to hold their breath to work in there, slowing progress to a crawl. To cool the water, I need to get the thermo aquatuner attached to the supply working - and it’s right over the other side of the colony, in the insulated chamber beneath the steam geyser.
The meal lice are withering on their branches because the room they’re in just hit 31 degrees, thanks to the too-hot water being pumped into the hydroponics system from a cistern in a hot biome. I can see peculiar alien wildlife waddling round pockets of beautifully coloured gases at the edge of the screen, and I’ve got that deep sensation of wellbeing that comes from a constructed system working perfectly. I listen to the jubilant, soft-edged synth soundtrack as I potter about, and enjoy the animations of the dupes as they jump over gaps, empty out buckets, and sneeze when they get cold from walking through water. Ah, if only things could stay this simple. Soon, I’m offered another dupe to join the team. While one of the dupes researches planter boxes for crops, I order a hand pump built above the nearest water cistern (so the dupes can wash their hands after shitting), and place a couple of oxygen diffusers to convert algae into lungfuel. I mine out a little space for the dupes to live in (the game’s cute little colonists are called duplicants, or dupes), giving them a place to shit and a place to sleep, then get working on a hamster wheel to provide power to a research computer. ONI translates this same gameplan to a side-on, cross-section viewpoint, and puts player agency at a remove through the familiar designate/place/prioritise controls of the colony management genre. In Don’t Starve, the business of not starving was accomplished through a top-down view, third-person action adventure where you had to discover increasingly dangerous locations and acquire resources from them. The thing that makes the game so clever is the same thing that made the title of Klei’s previous survival game, Don’t Starve, so funny: the fact that such a simple brief can be so harrowingly complex to fulfil. ONI’s premise is very clean: some cute little people have appeared at the centre of an asteroid, and you have to keep them supplied with oxygen and food until they can research and build a rocket to escape. But before the swollen-minded wolves take my fingers, let me snatch back the meat and explain myself. I’d even go so far as to say - and here I risk invoking the scorn of the Legion of Geniuses, who wait in the darkness beyond the comment section - it’s a little bit too hard. But then, for every time I’ve booted it up, there have been three where my cursor hovered over the icon before flinching away, as if I’d discovered mould on a sandwich or the HMRC logo on an envelope.īrilliant though it is, ONI is an ordeal.
It’s a rich simulation of the kind I adore, with an enchanting art style, a unique atmosphere, and a labyrinth of features to discover. During its two year stint in Early Access, Oxygen Not Included often came close to becoming one of my major time sink games.
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