Why Oxygen Not Included's Game Design is GENIUS!

#oxygennotincluded #gamedesign

[@talos1279]

The amazing thing behind oni is the art of programming. Simulation of heat, liquid, air, solid of countless entities of the same time makes the game world very complex and dynamic. Your action can cause a lot of reactions. For example, digging out the ice biome does not only give you access to the resource there. You are basically digging out a cold area that will suck the heat from the hot surrounding. The ice you dug is exposed to high temperature and melt, causing a big flux of water, both clean and unclean. The air that is isolated in the biome goes to the surrounding and cause all sorts of trouble (polluted oxygen).

[@oberlurch-handimations8628]

That's one of the games I'm too dumb for

[@doodleanimates8049]

Real ✋😔

[@Ben_R4mZ]

HEY MA! I FOUND ANOTHER NEW CREATOR MAKING GOOD VIDEOS! I like to edit my comments as i watch the videos so I'll be back if i find anything to say or comment on. ❤ (keep up the good work 👏👏👌) edit1: I love ONI, I genuinely do. It is a $25 USD, 96% Positive review game, that i suck at so bad I have less than 5 hours played. And this mainly comes down to the point you bring up concerning its mashup of Automation+Engineering+Colony Sim gameplay styles and loops. Factorio, on the other hand, i have 700 hours in that. And while this is a personal gripe and not at all aimed at the game itself, (its me not you i swear 😢), when I have the added "induced stress" of having colonists to worry about, (cant expand if they die, and there's a permanent failure state possible if ALL of them die), so I cant stay engaged for long enough to automate things; while Factorio just lets me keep building. (The factory must grow) I've watched a couple videos by what I'll call "high level" ONI players, and seeing someone set up petroleum production by combining magma and oil just looks to me like algebra does to an english major. edit2: This game's handel8ng of gases and fluids is probaboy its most intriguing mechanic of all. They didnt HAVE to make it that dynamic and interactive. But they did. And they took the time to do it right. (despite the possibility to store infinite oil in a space the size of my 1 bedroom apartment.) edit3: Quick commentary on the gameplay loop and unlocking new technology. My brain only made the connection today, but half the issue I have in these type of "research this to unlock new processes and buildings" games is my tendancy to research a technology simply because "why not; its available and itll be done by the time i figure out what I want." When in fact it feels like they're designed to be more along the lines of "Wow this mew technology solves a problem i have, but it needs X/Y/Z infrastructure", and you then spend your time (as its researching) to getting to know as many as possible. Turns down all who come on too strong, until THEY show up. edit4: excellent video, one comment i could make is comment on the soundtrack and (if you jabe been) just say the classic "The music you've been hearing in this video is all from this game. Links below." and youre golden.

[@GigsVT]

Ultimately very little is "synthetic" in the game. Stuff doesn't generally fail randomly, there's very little RNG. The challenges arise as emergent behavior created by the complexity of the simulation. Few games "trust" their simulation enough to allow emergent problems to be the main gameplay. They stick the player on rails and give them problems with neatly packaged unlockable solutions to problems that the developers themselves intend to happen. ONI is more like a sim game like roller coaster tycoon or cities skylines, where in theory at least, most of the problems that arise are problems created by the complexity that the player themselves created. Except all those other games fall pretty short of ONI in providing a rich enough simulation that the problems all feel real and not programmed.

[@Sotanaht01]

It falls into more or less the same gameplay category as Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, and Factorio. Except all of those games include external threats IN ADDITION to the emergent ones. I wouldn't say that ONI is necessary better for not having that. What I'm trying to say is that you don't necessarily have to forgo one to focus on the other, nor is it necessarily better.

[@samfriend3675]

Oddly enough, I think ONI actually DOES provide "external" threats to the player. They're just presented more organically. The oxygen demand is the first existential threat to the player. The solution to the first demand, however, creates the second. As most people who have played ONI know, if you want sustainable oxygen, you use the electrolyser, which makes it out of water. The electrolysers create heat (unless you supply them with very hot water, in which case you're already too hot anyway...), which slowly heats up the base and kills all the crops that grow in temperate environments and eventually the hot environments too. Solving THIS requires steam turbines and thermo-aquatuners (I know there are some funky things you can do with certain substances like ethanol, but even then steam turbines are VASTLY easier and more efficient). You need to have either ranched dreckos - requiring interacting with gasses in a complex manner to keep them in hydrogen - or found oil, which comes from one of the most dangerous biomes, all to aquire the plastic you need. You also need to have steel - requiring advanced metal processing and some way of managing industry. Essentially, if you want to solve the heat problem, you need to interact with most of ONI's systems, with mostly rocket building left (which itself is a solution to resource bottlenecks that like show up as things are consumed in getting to this point). Sure, these aren't a specific thing that says "LOOK, BAD THINGS AHEAD", but the tools the player is given to interact with the simulation are clearly (and very cleverly) designed to cause a whole separate set of issues that requires engaging with more systems.

[@Sotanaht01]

@@samfriend3675 Those are exactly what @GigsVT meant by "emergent" problems. They are problems that emerge as a result of how your gameplay interacts with the systems. If something breaks, its because you broke it. All those games I mentioned have external threats as well. Things that happen to you, not necessarily because of you. For the most part I'm talking about getting attacked, whether by goblins, raiders, or biters. A key difference in practice is that in ONI the game only moves as fast as you do. If you only have 1 dupe living a minimalistic life you can basically ignore the world and go virtually forever. Heat is never going to be an issue (except on certain hot asteroids without abyssalite heat barriers, which is sort of "external" and also exactly where experienced players go for an extra challenge). In Dwarf Fortress, if you don't move at least as fast as the threats, you die. Again, not necessarily better or worse overall. But I do think that certain types of players would definitely appreciate some more external threats in ONI. Generally the ones that go looking for the "hardest mode start". At the same time more than a few people complain about raids in Rimworld.

[@GigsVT]

@@Sotanaht01 I would say my main long run criticism of ONI is the excessive way steam generators reverse entropy, and the very particular way you pretty much need to make a steam room. I don't think it would be that hard to make a space radiator machine that rejects heat into space. I know heat radiation doesn't technically exist in the simulation, but it could be faked for this purpose. I do see what you are saying about later game challenges though. At this point I'm good enough to survive basically any reasonable environment, I did get many hundreds of hours of gameplay out of the game, so it's not like I didn't get my money's worth, but it does feel like there's little left to do. I'm not sure random events would be the answer necessarily, but it does give the game a sort of natural end once you've mastered everything.

[@The1MrJ]

I’ve got one and a half all achievements run complete in 2k hours

[@The1MrJ]

Be honest was this a school project? It feels very projecty lol

[@mr.kittens3905]

no, this was not a school project

[@The1MrJ]

It was well put together either way

[@YikersScoobs]

Love the game, keep dying... Kinda wish it had multiplayer

[@mr.kittens3905]

there is actually multiplayer mod on Steam if you ever are interested

[@doodleanimates8049]

@@mr.kittens3905 wanna play multiplayer oni

[@YikersScoobs]

@@mr.kittens3905 Now we're talking

[@flobiish]

music is a bit loud in the video

[@ariondys]

I didn't like my dupes being stress free so I made problems with mods and settings. It's so hard now, you are guaranteed a problem. Clean Slate Dupes ftw. Have to take Meeps when you get them even if you're not ready. Farming to feed ravenous Dupes on a freezing butthole size pocket of warmth admist nothing but Frostbite and death from frostbite, in the Deep Dark. And serious diseases. etc etc. Now I have the problems that guarantee addiction. There's no way to feed yourself with a Mushmaker liker this... you are scrabbling through the dirt, each one of your Dupes hand to mouth, just trying not to starve and have a mental breakdown that ends in themselves starving to death and making everyone else stress out from mourning. :) Take your first 3 Dupes, no rerolls, and the addiction loop will be over because your game will probably end on it's own.

[@uhohhotdog]

It was great until they added germs. Worst update they ever did

[@meshackkibunja2712]

You know you can turn down the difficulties

[@yjk92]

Germs are a joke since their nerf years ago. You can practically ignore their existence while playing.

[@uhohhotdog]

@@yjk92 good to know. I just stopped playing after that.

[@GlizzyTrefoil]

Genuinely awful compared to Factorio, Rimworld or any zach-like. Barely any proper documentation on materials, machines and the absence of an ingame tutorial equipping players with the apropriate thinking tools for problem solving, make this "gem" into a wiki/forum/youtube tutorial hell. For ONI especially knowing any sort of IRL physics or chemistry is more of a hinderance because the former makes me think liquid locks are impossible between areas of different pressures and latter makes me expect things would need oxygen to burn. 4 years ago, after 230 hours in the game on probably 5 or 6 tries, im absolutly sick and burned out from it. The hints/tips I got to fix my problems were to expand really, really quickly in all directions or build "heat deletion" machines. Reckless expansion got me germ infested before and heat deletion "feels" like cheating. Absolutely not my playstyle, I take my time and figure things out as the simulation runs only to watch the colony die slowly. ONI has about 100k players that have launched the rocket out of 2.1mio total players. Compare that to Factorio's 1mio players launching the rocket out of 5,5 mio total. That tells me that ONI is 4 to 10 times less accessible than Factorio and I dont think it has to be. The statistics on the rarest achievement tell a similar story, 7k for oni and 130k for factorio, most players dont even get to the point where they fall in love with ONI so they'd invest that much of their time. I wouldn't have these feelings about this game if I didn't want to like it. I can handle running into a wall with a game, but with ONI it feels like running into slow acting poison spikes, "my colony was doomed to death 50 cycles ago". I'd love to know the percentage of players building a rocket without using ANY "outside" help.

[@doodleanimates8049]

no joshua + ran out of oxylite + infected water supply + suffocation + mush bar user + outhouse disinfecter

[@mr.kittens3905]

someone ran out of oxylite ☠

[@doodleanimates8049]

Pyromaniac pawn + No Kill Box + Non-Organ Harvester + Melee 3 + No Plasteel + No Thrumbo Haver

[@XoIoRouge]

@@mr.kittens3905 Are you a content creator that mocks someone because they didn't share your opinion? Care to provide an actual rebuttal or maybe the OP is right and your video is super biased...

[@mr.kittens3905]

@@XoIoRouge It is a valid opinion, I just thought the reply was funny. I'm sorry if it came off as a bit harsh ):