Oxygen Not Included

I was surprised to find I had already talked about Oxygen Not Included back in 2017 when I was trying to do daily posts. It has indeed been sitting in my library for an awful long while, and I've been anticipating playing it, not just because it's been in Steam's top 100 games all the while. It almost met my high expectations.

Oxygen Not Included is a colony sim, with the twist that it takes place inside an asteroid with more-or-less limited resources. Most things that you produce only convert resources from one type to another, forcing you to run various production chains to get the resources back to what they were. Dirt and water to crops, to food, eaten, then out as sewage (polluted water), which is purified, returning to water and polluted dirt, which is composted back to regular dirt. There are other such examples of resource conversion cycles, but some resources do get lost, so some generators exist too.

Of course I couldn't talk about colony sims without mentioning Dwarf Fortress. I'm really glad that for once, a game does not try to copy Dwarf Fortress, and does something unique. The side-view perspective is a fresh change from every top-down colony sim, better facilitating the gas and liquid physics the game has. Liquids and gases don't mix, and not just with each other. On one hand, this makes both liquids and gases separate out into layers, but it's more often unrealistic and annoying than not, especially with stray tiles of gas or liquid that torment the base, yet are impossible to catch.

The start of each run is exciting enough as you feel out the surroundings and figure out what tools you have to tackle your immediate problems. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be quite enough to do, because as time goes on, games both get more similar, as you eventually reach the same final solutions for your problems, but also slow down heavily. One of the biggest problems I had with the game was how only a small percentage of labor went into tasks not crucial to keeping everyone alive, and it was very frustrating to see some tasks be queued for multiple days without getting completed. This is the same problem as in Don't Starve, which is their other very successful game, and I honestly don't understand how so many people can like it. I always complain about management games not having meaningful decisions. Then these games come along and reward efficiency and good design like few others, and yet it's too much, even for me.
If your colony does die, it's usually not some grand accident that's fun to watch. It's a slow death of attrition as your colonists are no longer able to produce more than their daily needs for some reason, and your supplies dwindle to zero over an agonizing length of time of not getting anything done.

I did get a good amount of hours in - far more than 90% of the games I play, but the eventual final straw was how the game really was designed to just make everything as difficult as possible for you. Many times, the solutions to problems seemed almost like bugs in the system, and problems were created where there should have been none. Managing all the liquids and gases with the limited space and resources you have is difficult enough. Some buildings output into pipes, but others have to vent gas or liquid straight into the atmosphere for no apparent reason. There are no airlocks for some reason, and the accepted answer is to just abuse the fluid simulation by making everyone go though a U-pipe of liquid instead of a door. You try to avoid that design, but you quickly realize that there just isn't a rational solution to certain problems aside from solutions like that. Similar situations can be found for turning heat into energy, gathering meat, and more.
This is compounded by the previous issue of there being little leftover labor. Good designs expect large redesigns of the base, but those can take weeks of in-game time, or hours of waiting in real life, and risk destabilizing production to the point of catastrophe if you go about them too fast. It's both infuriating and boring.

But I don't want to be too harsh on the game. I had a lot of fun playing it, and was borderline addicted at first. Regardless of its flaws, I would still say the game is well made. I think it's not difficult for someone to copy the formula and do a better job, but for now, it has merit being relatively unique. Recycling and fluid simulations are systems I absolutely love on a very personal level. I just wish I could spend more time playing the game and watching my designs come to life, instead of watching my colonists go about their daily necessities all day. Ultimately, I would still recommend it, and it even gets an under-the-line position on my favorite games list.