Oxygen

[h1] Not satisfied [/h1] [h2] Pros [/h2] The game is cheap. Of course, this can also be considered a downside. This is a simulation/management game where, once you start playing, you either stop playing or try to complete the game. Because the game is so cheap, I ended up making multiple attempts to beat it, which ultimately cost me a lot of time. [h2] Cons [/h2] First, the population system is hilarious, especially the birth and child system. At one point, I had 110 adults and 70 children. The developer might argue that there are ways to reduce the birth rate, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem. Normally, in a management game, higher-tier housing should generally be more efficient and provide better value. However, because the developer added separate requirements for protection and birth rates, the housing progression doesn't make much sense. You can have a building that is roughly twice as large, costs more than twice as many materials to build, and yet can only house about 1.5 times as many people. Even worse, this building has such poor efficiency that you still need to research it twice before unlocking it. The game also seems to lack a clear idea of how much production capacity each facility should have at different stages of the game. The research system mostly just says, "Research this to increase production," but the underlying production numbers are poorly balanced. For example, two sheet metal factories can't even supply one parts factory and one tailor shop. And that's without considering that these same resources are also required for constructing buildings. The kitchen is another example. Later in the game, research can increase its output, but when you first unlock it, you can have a large number of people working in the kitchen, and they can still only turn one unit of food into two units at a time—and not particularly quickly either. The research system is also very disconnected from the rest of the management gameplay. After playing for a while, I think the optimal strategy is to plant a few trees, reduce energy consumption as much as possible, and then assign almost everyone to research in order to unlock the later technologies. Only after that do you start assigning people to increase production. This is almost the opposite of how most management games work. Normally, you research technologies because you want to improve your production and economy. Here, it feels like you have to stop expanding and stop producing efficiently just to rush through the technology tree. The game also doesn't really allow you to leave it running unattended. There are frequent extreme weather events that require you to actively reassign workers. At the same time, there is no real reason to let the game run just because you haven't reached the population limit. You constantly have to intervene. I'm currently on Day 158, and considering that this is my 10th save, I would say my development is already quite good. Yet whenever I want to construct another building, I am almost always missing some construction material and have to wait for production to catch up. That's what led me to the conclusion that the best strategy is to stop expanding and focus entirely on research for a while. The Advanced Research Lab is already expensive to build, but even after paying that cost, you still have to research advanced protection technology and find specific exploration locations before you can unlock it. Overall, the game has some interesting ideas, but the population, housing, production, research, and progression systems don't feel properly balanced or connected. The biggest problem is that the game often rewards you for doing things that feel completely opposite to what a management game should encourage.