Clearly, someone at Klei Entertainment is a stickler for punishment. Invisible Inc., Don't Starve and Mark of the Ninja all have a touch of the cutesy-cruel to them, in their own special ways, their sweetness or wit spread devilishly thin over some brain-wracking difficulty, and Oxygen Not Included is the same. A case of twee, quippy tone layered over a sprawl of systems that's at once intricate and maddeningly vast, it's a game that's constantly teasing you; constantly luring and lulling just before throwing out another crisis; constantly reminding you that you are, in fact, a bit thick. Clearly I'm a stickler for punishment, too, because I think it's brilliant.

You'll start Oxygen Not Included picking a planet on which to be marooned (a new addition for the game's recent move from early access to full release, which basically serves as a more flavoursome way of tinkering with the game world's settings). After that, you spawn in, underground on some foreign world, with three Duplicates, the name for the little cloned people that form the backbone of your colony, and you're off: survive!

That's about as much onboarding as you get, which again is great if you're up for a proper challenge, but intimidating as anything if you like a gentler start. It makes the discovery of some new best-practise positively thrilling, for the fellow technocrats out there, though it also means bad habits form as you learn on the fly - mining downwards, into air vacuums filled with your own CO2, without even knowing there's an entire overlay for oxygen levels, or constructing an outhouse (one of the few hints you're given early on) without a washbasin, so you think you've been smart but actually everyone is about to die of food poisoning because they didn't wash their hands.

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After a bit of a last minute delay, developer Klei Entertainment has announced that its enormously enjoyable space colony management sim, Oxygen Not Included, will be leaving early access and getting its full PC launch next week, on Tuesday, 30th July.

Those that opt to take up Oxygen Not Included's challenge come launch day, will find themselves tasked with constructing and managing a sustainable colony deep within an alien space rock - achieved by commanding a steadily growing team of Duplicants, while also ensuring all their basic needs - eating, breathing, and pooping, for instance - are met.

Crucial to the endeavour is the manipulation and redirection of liquids and gases into (in the case of water and oxygen) and away from (in the case of anything poisonous) your burgeoning colony. It's a wonderfully rich experience, with some gloriously endearing presentation, that's gone from strength to strength during early access development.

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UPDATE 17/4/19: Klei Entertainment has confirmed that its excellent space colony management sim, Oxygen Not Included, will be leaving early access and launching in its Version 1.0 guise on May 28th.

In preparation, Oxygen Not Included just received the third and final instalment in its Quality of Life series of updates, designed - as you can probably imagine - to polish the experience to a sheen, ahead of full release. One last update, arriving on launch day, will introduce three new biomes, new creatures, new buildings, and mod support - with DLC planned to follow.

And if you fancy taking the plunge right now, unbothered by the construction work as Klei tidies up Oxygen Not Included's remaining loose ends, the game is currently discounted by 25% on Steam and the Epic Store, where it's 14.24 instead of its usual 18.99.

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