Klei's sci-fi survival sim Oxygen Not Included entered Early Access in February of 2017, and leaves it now just over two years later. If you've been holding out on trying this game of stranded "Duplicants" crafting a colony from scratch on unforgivingly harsh asteroids, now's the time.

Klei's forum post sums up how far it's come: "We started with a game that had little more than a few Duplicants and some pipes full of cold water. Since then we’ve added oil biomes and automation, Duplicant skill progression and tubes to zip around in, critter ranching and breeding, and more features than could possibly be named. Now Duplicants can even break through the surface of their rocky home and escape away into space… with your guidance, of course."

As is par for the course, they'll continue patching Oxygen Not Included to catch bugs and tweak balance issues.

Another of Klei's games, card-RPG Griftlands, is currently in playable alpha on the Epic Store and will enter Steam Early Access when it hits beta next year.

After an extended stint in Early Access, Oxygen Not Included is set to launch next week. Developer Klei postponed the launch back in May, and it looks like it's just going to make the second launch window of July by a hair's breadth. 

The colony sim has, not surprisingly, changed quite a bit during its two years in Early Access, sprouting a new skill system, which is a bit more micromanagement intensive; loads of new things to construct, including ranch buildings for the alien critters you can rear; and an automation system that lets you use logic gates and sensors to make things more efficient. 

New for 1.0 are asteroids with random traits, explorable of course, along with a bunch of new biomes and buildings. And while survival will be your biggest concern, you'll also have colony goals that your diligent duplicants will need to work towards. More details on what the launch update includes will be available on the day. 

While Klei's now working on Griftlands, it still has plans for Oxygen Not Included. There's more the developer wants to explore, though it's not yet sharing what that might be. 

Oxygen Not Included is due out on July 30 on Steam and the Epic Games Store. 

After two years in Early Access, Oxygen Not Included is getting ready to launch. Klei's survival management romp has two more updates on the docket, and then it will finally hit 1.0 in late May. 

On April 16, the third quality of life update will fine-tune, polish and scour the game for bugs, and a final update in late May will add three new biomes, along with new creatures, buildings and more. Mod support will also be added. 

"With that, we feel Oxygen Not Included is ready for a full launch," reads the announcement. "After we've officially launched, we will continue to make quality of life improvements and bug fixes, while the bulk of the team will be moving on to building DLC for the game, where we can explore further ideas and expansions to ONI's world."

It's managed to snare 1.5 million players during Early Access, says Klei, and rightly so, as it's been growing into another cracking survival game from the Don't Starve studio. It's still very different from its gothic open-world outing, though. For one, Don't Starve didn't feature nearly as much pee. 

Chris dug it when it he checked it out in 2017—read his Oxygen Not Included impressions—but it's grown considerably since. There are rockets now! And you can raise adorable alien critters. I'm already packing my bags. 

Oxygen Not Included is a sci-fi management sim about clones building an underground base inside in asteroid, currently in Early Access. Since it's from Klei, the makers of Don't Starve, you know it involves very bad things happening to those clones, or Duplicants as they call them, but the latest update seems to add something nice for those poor Dupes: pets.

The Ranching Upgrade Mark 1 is the first of two planned updates, with the second to follow in six weeks time. Though Klei can't say exactly what they're saving for Mark 2, "...we can say that it will increase the depth of critter loops and utility, and will further build on the mechanical foundations laid in this half of the upgrade. (And maybe there'll be a new species...)"

As for what's in the Mark 1 update, there's quite a lot to it. Here's Klei again to explain: "Critter ranching allows you to interact with critters in a variety of new ways and integrate them into the daily routine of your colony. Duplicants, particularly those employed as Ranchers, can care for Hatches, Shine Bugs, and Pufts to increase their happiness, farm additional resources from them, and even breed new critters for your herd."

There's also a new encyclopedia of critters, new varieties of geyser, and various performance tweaks and bug fixes. Full notes can be found here.

The patch note is an underappreciated art form. Among the dry details of damage buffs and bug fixes are occasionally brilliant puns or revelatory details about the absurd complexity of videogames. Dwarf Fortress is the undisputed king of unintentionally hilarious updates ("Cleaned up the bear situation"), but we've also written about some of the all-time greats from Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, and World of Warcraft.

Absurdity is always with us, though, and the good gods know we've needed every laugh we could find in 2017. To find the very best ones, I dove through the 2017 community updates and patch notes from all kinds of games. Deep, open-world survival games are always good for a laugh. After all, they model systems like pooping and sleeping, and a mention of "shitting the bed" is already 90 percent of a joke.

H1Z1

12/13

• Blood effects have been changed back to the classic mist effect. 

12/7

• Toxic Cargo Pants have been updated to be more consistent 

11/15 

• Shooting from a passenger seat should no longer result in hitting a teammate in the backseat. 

8/29 

• Old rocks have been removed and replaced with new, varied rock formations.
• Players should no longer fall out of their parachute. 

7 Days to Die

via reddit user u/nettech09

10/26 

• Some general improvements to zombie jumping
• Fixed: Snakes are fireproof

8/31

• Fixed: Businessman Zombie when killed can have his head dislocated when he falls backwards 
• Fixed: Vultures can fly underwater
• Fixed: Bears and wolves walk on water 

8/04

• Fixed: Wrong open sound on eviscerated remains
• Fixed: Dysentery description does not mention that it is lethal 

6/06

• Added: Moldy Bread is a science crafting item
• Changed: Fat zombie cops are bigger
• Changed: Zombie soldiers are less generous with the rocket launchers
• Fixed: Breaking down a car on the sloped road will create a hole in the world 

Oxygen Not Included

10/5

• Stress vomiting Duplicants infected with Hypothermia should no longer vomit "Hypothermia germs" 

8/31

• Fixed a crash that could occur if a Duplicant died while using a wash basin 

3/02

• Algae distillery has a much longer conversion interval
• Duplicants no longer use the massage table during red alert 

Ylands

12/9

• Horse is no longer perceived as a threat when sleeping 

Medieval Engineers

via reddit user u/zacrynix

12/12

• Fixed a crash when you walk on the exact north pole. 

11/28

• The Janitor will now clean up any static grids in the center of the planet. 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

via reddit user u/beerye 

12/27  

• Fixed the issue where the falling speed meter text was showing abnormally in Portuguese 

12/11

• Fixed the issue where player's footstep sound was silenced when player moved diagonally or wore particular shoes 

12/8

• Fixed the issue where while vaulting in FPP, player could look inside own body 

Lone Echo

8/30 

• Repeatedly punching the dummies will no longer result in a crash. Swing away. 

Prey

via reddit user u/everypostepic 

8/2

• Fixed crash when mimicking bass guitar in the Yellow Tulip.
• Player can no longer bypass ceiling collision by mantling GLOO. 
• If the player manages to fully GLOO the greater mimic while it is in mid-lunge toward the player's face, the facegrab animation will no longer play and trap the player. 

5/31

• Superfruit no longer appears shrunken and flat when fully grown.

As I slogged deeper and deeper into the year, dozens of tabs open across three monitors and a laptop, I started to get a little delirious. It was in this moment that I fell in love with the long-suffering community managers and blog writers who compile patch notes. These poor people cry out for help with little quips, "just to see if anyone is still reading this." My friends: I see you, and I love you. 

Astroneer

12/18

• Fixed a few other instances of Client players getting stuck in a wheelie while driving a Rover in Multiplayer games. 

10/12

• Fixed an issue where Rovers would fly into space when loading a save from a rover seat 

9/15

• Fixed a rare crash, that according to engineers was “super weird, and something that should never occur,” involving the game trying to access non-existent Rover wheels.
• Fixed an issue where items would go on a beautiful journey into space if not collected from an dead Astroneer before a second death occurs. 

Hitman

via reddit user u/newbzoors 

7/13

• We've fixed an issue that could cause the toilet in the Marrakesh school to behave erratically after 47 kicks it onto Zaydan. This could occasionally result in 47's death. Seriously. 

Total War: Warhammer

via reddit user u/flavahbeast 

10/25

• FIXED an issue with the AI proposing peace right after entering a war with the player
• FIXED a staircase in Lothern Siege battle map which would cause chariots to spontaneously combust
• FIXED CA Cinematics Team’s obsession with slaying High Elves. May require further testing…
• FIXED Spearmen unit in Tor Elithis Rogue army T-Posing
• Skavenslaves: more salt added to diet; now 25% more delicious 

8/9

• Under-Morking no longer automatically leads to over-Gorking, and vice-versa. The waxing or waning of Morrslieb may affect this. Or it may not. 

Last year during the PC Gaming Show E3 broadcast, Klei Entertainment revealed Oxygen Not Included, the studio's highly-scientific take on the colony sim genre. With Oxygen Not Included hitting Early Access last month, it's already time to show off something new. This year the talented Canadian developer will reveal another completely new project live on the PC Gaming Show stage at E3.

Watch the PC Gaming Show Monday, June 12 at 10 AM Pacific (1 PM Eastern, 6 PM BST) on twitch.tv/pcgamer, Steam, or Facebook to see it first.

Ellie, my researcher, has hit a wall. Literally, I mean. Completely stressed out, she's left her work station and is running around the colony, punching random blocks with her fists, slamming her head against them in frustration, and pausing periodically to try to compose herself (and failing) before continuing her rampage. As she dashes around in a blind rage she even delivers a few vicious blows to the colony's manual power generator (it's like a huge hamster wheel) before another, more level-headed colonist hurriedly steps in to make repairs. Eventually Ellie runs over to the massage table, where I'm happy to see that rather than punching it to pieces, she climbs aboard for a stress-relieving mechanical back-rub. The Ellie problem has been temporarily resolved but a new issue crops up: Otto, another colonist, has gone from stress burping to stress vomiting. That's probably not a good sign.

I'm in my third hour of play, and things have begun to fall apart after mostly smooth sailing during hours one and two. Oxygen Not Included, now in Early Access, is a management simulation from Klei Entertainment (developer of Don't Starve) in which you direct a handful of brave clones to build an underground base in an asteroid. You need to manage your colonists as they dig out caverns, gather resources, build machinery, and turn a harsh environment into a livable underground home. As you may have gathered from the title, not only do the colonists need food, warmth, and comfort, but also enough clean air to breathe. And clearly, you need to keep on eye on their stress levels—which can rise due foul odors, full bladders, lack of sleep, and other factors—because like Ellie they can to go a little nuts, or in Otto's case, simply start barfing on everything.

I've decided not to consult any wikis during my first session: I've grown a bit weary of the endless alt-tabbing and hours of reading that typically accompany these Early Access survival games. Oxygen Not Included, thankfully, does a good job of explaining most of its basic features in menus, mouse-over tips, and unobtrusive tutorial notifications, and the information you need to get started is easy to come by right there in the game.

I'm also learning a lot through simple observation. I can see that gases like oxygen and hydrogen float upwards, while others, such as carbon dioxide, settle downwards. As these gases concentrate, float, and swirl, you can easily tell what is breathable and what is dangerous without the colored mists completely obscuring everything else, and there are helpful overlays you can toggle to get an idea of trouble spots. There are certainly challenges in solving the issues of toxic gases mingling with breathable oxygen, but at least it's easy to see those issues in the first place. Water, meanwhile, flows and pools thanks to gravity, but not entirely smoothly: due to surface tension it may cling to rocks or narrow tunnels. Water, naturally, is prone to pollution as well, and can be a hazard like tainted air is. I learned this the hard way when one of my clones couldn't make it to the bathroom in time, and spread piss all over the research area. Way to go, Leon.

There are various mechanical items you can unlock through research, like liquid and gas pumps and pipes to direct helpful elements like water and O2 where they need to be, and pump away chlorine gas and other pollutants. Electricity for these machines begins with a manually operated generator (the human hamster wheel), with batteries to store surplus power power and wires you can string around the base to link the machinery. Once you've begun to research new technology you can also build generators powered by coal, natural gas, and hydrogen. Building something is as simple as selecting what you want and plopping it somewhere, while icons and text clearly identify any missing requirements.

It's tricky, though, dealing with those gases. After building my hydrogen generator in a pocket of gas in a nearby cavern, I noticed a colonist was constantly running over to repair it. My pump was also pulling in chlorine, which was plentiful in the same cave and was damaging the generator. As more hydrogen got used for the generator, chlorine filled the space to take its place, causing my generator to break down even more often. I added a filter that would separate the two gases (though I'm not entirely sure I hooked it up properly) and walled most off the chlorine with solid tile.

Then the small space ran out of hydrogen altogether and became a vacuum, shutting the generator down again. I had a colonist destroy an airlock so the pump could use the remaining amount of hydrogen that was present in the generator room, which kept the genny running a bit longer until that space was empty, too (though there was some leftover chlorine swirling around, causing more damage). Then it shut down for good. Time to look elsewhere for my hydrogen.

I had a similar problem with water, which can be used for farming and plumbing. The pump I'd submerged in one cave eventually pumped all the water out, so I dug a tunnel and laid down some pipe in another water-filled cavern, hoping to send the water into the now-empty one. A portion of my tunnel collapsed, however, sending the water flooding into my base before I'd finished connecting my pipe. Some of the water made it to the empty cave, but it also covered the floors in several areas, submerged some other machinery (which stopped working) and of course gave my colonists 'soggy feet' which tends to make them cold and unhappy.

It was a bit of a mess. In fact my colony in general is a mess, not just due to my plumbing and piping miscues but from poor planning. I hadn't provided enough venting in certain areas for the oxygen to flow properly, and I probably should have placed the lavatories (which can get plenty toxic themselves) a bit further away from the colonists' beds. Stress levels continued to rise among my little colonists as things slowly but steadily grew worse.

I'm up to seven or eight colonists (you receive new ones, called Duplicants because they're constructed by a giant 3D printer, every few days) before I decide that rather than trying to salvage my stinky, soggy base, that I should just try to start over from scratch. Time to kill everybody!

In this regard, I have to say, Duplicants are surprisingly durable. They can live a long, long time in deadly environments and keep on working even when things are really not going their way. While Ellie is losing her mind, her health remains high, as does that of all my other little workers. I have to make a concerted effort to kill them in the end (well, I don't have to, I want to, since I'm starting over anyway).

I disable all the machinery, toilets, generators, and food production and I set the colony to red alert, meaning colonists will prioritize work above all other needs, even sleep. Finally, they begin to drop. Otto stress-burps a final time before keeling over, Ellie stops rampaging and croaks, and a Duplicant called Mi-Ma pauses in her pointless task, obtains a momentary expression of bliss, then expires.

Oxygen Not Included is in Early Access, but it's already a heck of a lot of fun (and for the record, my second colony is going much better than my first). Thanks to the colonists' hearty and durable nature, the early game feels forgiving enough to let you take your time, work on your colony at a leisurely pace, and not worry about a few accidents or problems completely wiping out all of your citizens in one fell swoop.

There's a lot of complexity and the opportunity to build deep and complicated mechanical systems if that's your thing, but Klei's done a great job making the game easy to get into and grasp the basics, unlike many other survival management games. Maybe Ellie lost her mind from stress, but I haven't yet.