[h1] The Brief Breakdown: 95% [/h1]
Oxygen Not Included is one of Klei’s masterpieces. While I couldn’t get into “Don’t Starve” and its multiplayer too easily, I can say that I’ve lost an incredible amount of time playing this. I’ll be reviewing this product alongside its first DLC, “Spaced Out,” as that is how I’ve played the game since the beginning, but I’ll explain the differences. While there are now several DLCs available that expand the way the game plays and focuses on adding different asteroids and planetoids added, I can say that, without a doubt, the base game and “Spaced Out” are easily worth the bundled price. 38/40 .
[h1] Complete Thoughts: [/h1]
The game is an amazing settlement simulator that focuses on playing around the main game map’s resources and dealing with the consequences of your actions down the road. You might think you have enough algae to power your oxygen generators, for example, until an hour in you realize you’ve scraped most of it off the cave walls and haven’t learned how to generate oxygen from the water. Or, you could rely on coal or natural gas and start a cascading effect where you’re slowly choking your colony out through carbon dioxide being pumped into the air and killing your crops from the amount of heat you’ve added to your environmental ecosystem. In a similar style to many other settlement sims, don’t expect to have a long-lasting and functional colony at first, but rather learn how to play with the systems and see how they interact and affect the colony’s environment, and build on each failure until you’re harnessing volcanos to feed small animals in order to get coal to power your colony! The network is amazingly robust, but can be absolutely punishing if you don’t pay attention to your set up while you’re learning the game’s mechanics.
Spaced Out! differs from base game in that it adds planetoids for you to launch and settle. While the Spaced Out! planetoids tend to be smaller than the asteroids on the base game, you [i] can [/i] still use the base asteroids with the Spaced Out! content, including the settling of other planetoids. This expanded gameplay allows you to leave your initial base for more than just a method of harnessing points of interest on the star map and then coming back, and has you focus on setting up a string of settlements in the star map that will support each other by sending different resources to each other that may not be abundant or available on other planetoids/asteroids. Because of the expanded play, I again suggest that the bundle be bought for the base game and Spaced Out!
Note: I will be copy-pasting this review onto both the vanilla game and Spaced Out! as I genuinely feel the game would be incomplete without the DLC. Again, I encourage to buy it via the bundle or even on sale. This review will not be added onto the other DLCs, however, and any reviews I add to those will be judging that content separately from the base and Spaced Out!
[h1] System Breakdown (The numbers!) [/h1]
[u] Gameplay: 9 [/u]
[b] 5 [/b] – The gameplay has a consistent style that doesn’t pull the player from it in a distracting manner. While there will be some issues with the game when it comes to learning curve, I have yet to meet a major issue that isn’t somehow related to the Workshop mods!
[b] 3 [/b] – Mechanically, the game is very sound and doesn’t have any issues when it comes to gameplay which could include major issues like clipping or invisible walls that would prevent player interaction in areas that wouldn’t make any sense.
[b] 1 [/b] – Overall the game is amazingly stable and I haven’t had an issue with it launching or crashing outside the use of my mods. I will say, however, that as the colonies get big enough some smaller machines might have an issue with lag due to the amount of things being processed.
[u] Sound: 10 [/u]
[b] 5 [/b] – The sound style is consistent and doesn’t clash with the game’s setting or graphical design with the music also remaining consistent and doesn’t become tiring to have on.
[b] 5 [/b] – The sound engineering is very well done without any audible crackles or errors, and the volume levels are easily modified so that the experience is set to the player’s liking.
[u] Controls: 10 [/u]
[b] 3 [/b] – The UI is very well labelled and designed with an easy way to access and find blueprints, setting up shifts, individual dupe priorities, and what food is and isn’t allowed to be consumed.
[b] 3 [/b] – The controls are very easy to rebind and includes a way to modify the scrolling speed for the camera easily found in the settings.
[b] 2 [/b] – The controls are responsive with very little lag outside of things that might be generated in-game while playing.
[b] 2 [/b] – The controls are ergonomically designed so that the player can play it in many comfortable ways. They don’t feel clunky or uncomfortable once you get used to the hotkeys and locations of things on the UI.
[u] Graphics: 9 [/u]
[b] 4 [/b] – The style remains consistent with no deviations from the expected design concepts and visuals.
[b] 4 [/b] – The graphics remain very clear with the ability to easily read what is happening graphically on the screen. It’s hard to get lost in your gameplay and very easy to become familiar with the settlement’s visuals.
[b] 1 [/b] – There is an issue with lag once the colony becomes big enough to have to process several dupes, systems, and other movements, but I’ve not had it be entirely debilitating. I’ve only really noticed the game speed feel like it went from x3 speed to x2.
