Oxygen Not Included — Mac download

A duplicant just unearthed a pocket of chlorine. Another's bladder is full, and the power grid is spiking. You pause the simulation. You queue a scrubber build, route the desperate one to a lavatory, and dial back the treadmills before the batteries blow.

That minute-to-minute loop defines the game. You start with three duplicants and a printing pod. You dig for oxygen and algae, build cots, and research farming. The colony looks stable. It isn't. Stress climbs because someone keeps waking up to a snorer. A wire overloads and the mealwood wilts. You learn that tool familiarity means some colonists dig faster, so you assign them accordingly. Later, the demands stack: a relaxation machine to soothe nerves, a food surplus to survive lean cycles, and constant bladder management. The difficulty is real. Managing a base and several people inside it is very difficult, and the game never lets you forget it.

Spreadsheet thinkers who track oxygen per cycle

Not everyone walks away from an asteroid with a happy colony. A few types of player stick with it longest.

Spreadsheet thinkers. If you naturally track inputs and outputs — oxygen per cycle, calories per duplicant, heat per machine — the game rewards that instinct. You will spend as much time on the overlay panels as you do on the main view.

Failure-tolerant tinkerers. Colonies collapse. A single missed algae delivery can cascade into suffocation, stress vomiting, and a base full of polluted water. Players who treat each collapse as a lesson rather than a frustration get the most depth out of the simulation.

Systems optimisers. The joy here is not just surviving but refining. Routing plumbing so it cools the power plant on its way to the lavatory feels like solving a puzzle with pipes. These players often restart not because they lost, but because they spotted a cleaner layout.

Priority sub-menus hide per-duplicant job bumps

Some features hide in plain sight. New colonies feel smoother once you notice them.

• Priority system. The 1–9 scale is obvious. Less obvious: you can set sub-priorities per duplicant. A colonist with high digging skill gets a bump on excavation tasks; the slow digger handles supply runs. It cuts idle time sharply.
• Sweep-only storage. Storage bins set to "sweep only" stop duplicants hauling every loose chunk of sandstone mid-crisis. Mark what matters, leave the rest, and keep the colony moving.
• Door restrictions. A simple pneumatic door can block movement in one direction. Keep your artist away from the caustic biome without a suit, no complex permissions required.
• Consumables panel. It is one click from the top bar. Disable low-grade food when morale dips, or reserve the last pickled meal for a duplicant with a bottomless stomach trait. The difference between a tantrum and a productive cycle often lives in that menu.

Quick facts

Does the colony need constant attention, or can it run itself?

Early cycles demand hands-on care. Once basic oxygen and food loops stabilise, you can step back for short stretches. But the game does not have a true idle mode. Heat creep, resource depletion, and duplicant stress build in the background. A stable base holds for a while; a forgotten base dies quietly.

Small failures teach more than the first hour

The first hour teaches the basics: dig, build, breathe. The next ten hours teach you what you did wrong in the first hour. The game does not hold your hand, but each system reveals itself through small failures. A duplicant pees in the water supply once, and you never forget to separate plumbing again.

What happens to waste, and does it actually matter?

Everything leaves something behind. Carbon dioxide pools at the bottom of the base. Polluted water off-gasses. Heat radiates from machinery. Ignoring waste works for a few cycles; after that, diseases spread and crops stifle. Waste management is not a side task — it is half the game.

• Hotfix release
• Fixed duplicants teleporting to the bottom left of the world after rescue and resuscitation
• Fixed the Masterworks skill string to mention Masterpiece artwork quality
• Fixed a gasket deconstruction issue that spawned the wrong element
• Fixed a liquid rendering bug on older graphics cards

• macOS (details not specified by developer)
• Runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs