Klei are the developers of Invisible, Inc., which is the best turn-based game since Chess. It stands to reason, then, that I’m always going to be interested in their releases, and Oxygen Not Included [official site] has had my interest since I first heard about it. An alpha has been sold for a while but the space colony management sim is moving to the next phase of its release, entering Early Access, on May 18th. The best way to learn about Oxygen Not Included is to look at Brendan’s Premature Evaluation article, which contains very little oxygen but large quantities of piss.

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Every week we warp Brendan into the gaseous caverns of early access to see if he can find precious games worth playing in the gloom. This time, the subterranean space colonisation of Oxygen Not Included [official site]

Everything is covered in piss. When I branded my new space colony Yellow Water Station I did so because I was prompted to come up with a suitable name for a settlement on the interstellar frontier. But all I could think of was how weird it is that astronauts drink their own recycled and purified urine. Yellow Water Station was my puerile attempt at humour. I didn t expect the new underground village I was building to accept its new moniker with such enthusiasm. Now everything is covered in piss, poisonous red gas is building up in the sleeping quarters, and there s a dead body at the bottom of one of the aquifers. … [visit site to read more]

Alec is away this week. I fear that if he can’t find a wifi signal on his travels he might resort to haruspicy to try and find the truths contained within the weekly Steam charts. These round-ups of the ten games with the most cumulative sales over the past week are his obsession and his curse.

This week: while the cat’s away…

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