About In-game tips for newcomers

[javo01]

I love Oxygen not Included, and although my wife and I have played over 100 hours, we're still noobs. I recall that when I first downloaded the game I thought it was quite intimidating and overwhelming. It took a long time to understand what things are for and I still don't know how to use the other half of stuff. My suggestion might not be too relevant especially nowadays that anyone can watch YouTube/Twitch videos on "how to do this" or "how I built my base", but still it would be great if noobs don't have to rely on external sources to understand how the game works, otherwise, you end up doing a lot of research in-game, being able to build all this stuff and having no idea of why on earth you'd need to build this or that. So I think would be great to have in-game is (disable-able) tips/reminders concerning the management of complex systems in the game, such as temperature, pressure, and even gas mgmt, electricity, disease, and so on. One idea would be to just put specific examples of use of an item when you hover/click on them on the menus (with a photo of it being used?), similar to the diagrams of "electricity in/out" that already exist.

Another idea is having tips like the tutorial ones at the beginning of the game. These tips could even be written by players, could show example animations of the situation in question.. Or it could be like warnings. I think of SimCity and how it used to show warning messages like "Crime rate is too high! Build more police stations" or "Your citizens are unhappy, maybe lower the taxes?". Even if sometimes they sound like "common sense" stuff, tips like this, taken to the context of such a complex game like ONI could help newcomers understand the logics of the game without taking away the possibility of creative approaches and the discovery factor.

Examples that I can think of:

- "Your base is running hot! Try isolating heat sources or building fans"

- "The door (or whatever) is melting! try using a more heat-resistant material"

- "To properly use steam power, you need to do XX and XX (showing image/video of a working steam power plant)" (as opposed to just saying the pressure down must be higher than the pressure up).

 

Anyway, just a thought to make the game less intimidating to newcomers!