Evolution of the game difficulty and design

[Neishahunter]

Hi, I first discovered ONI in the early access Agricultural update in 2017. Then, I came back a little bit in the MK update in 2019. After a vert long hiatus, I finally came back to the game very recently. And I am somehow really confused how the game changed and how easy game became. It seems to me that, by design, in early 2017, ONI was at core a survival game with physic and thermodynamic elements with a slight focus on setup creation (like automatic thermoregulation, heat exchanger and so one) to help increase the survival. Now, in 2026, this same game seems way more like a Set up creation builder with physic and thermodynamic elements and a slight touch of survival barely significant in the overall picture.

 When I began in 2017, the emphasis was on Survival, there was 4 main  difficulty to focus on:

1) Oygenation and Food production

2) Stress level

3) Thermoregulation

4) Ressource scarcity/Finite amount of ressource.

Oxygenation required you to expand in the asteroid to get alguea then water to transform into Oxygen and to find plant (and few critter) to domesticate to generate food.

By gaining attribute and levels (which existed in early access), your dupes had better and better food quality and decor expectation, focing you to get out of your starting biome to get access to them. If you didn't do so, your base was doomed by an almost never ending chain of stress reaction, stopping your workforce, disrupting and destroying your base and generating even more stress which could lead in a very early end game.

As you had to expand, you digged into the biome to get access to new food sources and renewable water, generating heat transfer in the process between the newly dig biome, the mostly hot geyser and your cool base. The insulation tools (insulated tiles) were somehow effective, but the heat generating and mostly the cool generating tools were few, sparce and limited.

The "meta" for cooling the base after isolating it was with two main long term tools: the few and limited wheezeworts and the also limited but powerfull anti entropy thermo-nullifier. When you got these three main goal achieved, you reached a bottleneck, ressource scarcity, like sand and dirt, which required the creation of set up to survive the longest possible. For example, sand main usage were due to the water purifier so to stop relying on this sand, you had to install isolated, more than 100 degree Celcius room to transform your polluted water into steam then use another isolated cooler room (cooled with one of the two tools mentionned before) to transform the steam back into clean, usable water. In the same way, dirt was mostly finite, but renewable with composting. By taming, increasing the critter population, then letting them return to wildness, you created renewable food surplus which could be let to rot to be used in the compost.

You also had to hurry up to go to the surface, as meterors destroyed tiles quite easily, and didn't generate infinite regolite as now.

All of this created a "cycle" where the survival was the focus, the physic/thermic reaction the tools and the set up the solution to the ultimate survival problem.

 

In 2019, the meta changed a bit into some huge simplification on the stress level with the introduction of morale and on the food level with the ranching, particulary with the drecko who could eat ressource free balm lily to generate a never ending source of food. Although the new illness system introduced the year before increased the risk of an unprepared expedition to the swamp biomes mitigating a bit of the difficulty loss. Until the apparition of steam generator and thermo-regulator/aquatunner, thermal regulation was still difficult, mainly due to the scarcity of the means to cooling. And finally, sand/dirt were still limited although the change to meteors shower with the regolith meteors meants the sand limitation was somehow removed.

 

Now, in 2026, I am back in the game and I am really perplexed how the game feels. It is incredibly EASY: the stress has become a non issue, making the 3 main rooms (Latrine/Washroom, Barracks/Bedroom and Mess/Great/Banquet room make you immune to stress in less than 5 cycles. The early food limitation is inexistant, with all the critter available, ranching has never been easier , and the pip dirt generation and planting of wild plants even make the exploration of the asteroid almost pointless. With wild trees giving free wood leading to free biodisel with ethanol generator and so free polluted water with petrolum generator, you get  enough oxygen for your duplicant via filtering this polluted water and electrolizing the now clean water: you therefore don't even need to leave your starting biome to look for a geyser to oxygenate your base. The survival aspect of the game has become insignificant.

In Conclusion, it seems to me that the focus of the game switched heavily from survival focus to a set up/automatisation engineering systems focus(to boil crude oil into methane for exemple) which while distracting are ultimately meaningless as their is no real need to them. And I'm not even talking about the prehistoric planet packs critter and plants which are totally unbalanced and create infinite ressources without difficulty.

 

Am I the only one who's baffled by the direction the game took?

Edited February 16 by Neishahunter

[asurendra]

First of all, you need to try hard difficulty settings. While normal mode is easy, yes, max difficulty changes things a lot.

With max stress, you have to have highest morale possible. Its obligatory, because its only mitigates passive stress gain. And any, any sources of stress raise its level forcing you to either use massage which is eating your energy alongside with dupes working time or use expensive  options like dream machine. 6 dupes and 500g per sec O2 for make it work! Its almost double cost of your colony survival...

And recently KLEI added a lot of new sources of stress. Being too cold or too hot not only cause -5 to athletics (terrible!), but also make your dupes nervous. 

Max hunger also hits hard. With it your starting food source will be eaten in less than two cycles. Even before you get a chance to print another dupe. One-time plants wont last long too so you have to work on your food sources immediately, from cycle one. 

Second, try Space out. Moonlets cluster is something. Extra small maps, scarce natural resources, some dont even have any source of water. Game doesnt force you to expand? Well, good luck surviving on Flipped only, where you have hot steam vent and two AETNs as your only option of cooling. No source of fiber, no source of plastic, nothing. 

And third and most: do not use abuses. ONI is cool game cos it allows player to choose difficulty by themself. You dont like free dreckos meat? Dont feed them with balms, use Peppernuts instead. It wont be free anymore. Dont like wild planting? Just dont do it. Domesticated trees to the rescue...

[Neishahunter]

I already play on highest difficulty setting, but annoyingly except for the starvation slider , all the other difficulty sliders doesn't change much. 

Starvationwhich makes dupplicant needs 2 times the food, so two times as long to eat increase early difficulty, by adding a bit of food pressure push you in the right direction (digging your starting biome and exploring new one fast) but is pointless with farming. It is only a thing when you go ranch only, which I now do but there are so much of free food in starting biome that you won't starve for cycles even printing one duplicant every cycle until you get enough. Just by digging, you can get around 50-100 muckroots so 40 000-80 000 kcal which is enough food for 7 cycle bare minimum without counting the free 15 000 kcal food and all the wild plant. Fast ranching isn't that much of a pain but definetly adds early game interest. But when pacu (with alguea, their ranching isn't even with them a issue anymore, passing from 120 kg/cycle per pacu to 7.5 kg) and hatch farming is going on, starvation only adds another hour of eating and force you to cook less time consuming recipe or hire one more cook. 

Draconian morale only apply when you are in negative morale, which can never happen if you don't overskill on purpose, and Frankly Depressing is negated by excess Morale stress bonus and all of passive stress recovery.

Diseases isn't even a matter, as you can leave your starting biome with gas mask and Food Poisoning only happen by base design mistakes. Zombie spore is also mostly impossible to get, as your dupe will be in atmo suit in the oil biome anyway.

Durability only slows you down a bit, or require more outfits to compensate the time loss and Metor showers is barely signifiant as most meteor now adds ressource tiles  (mostly regolith) instead of destroying the top of the asteroid.

I even play with most of the mod I found to increase the difficulty reducing morale bonuses from room and food and reintroducing illness lethality. But it doesn't matter much: diseases are mostly a non issue and Morale, by design, is a abondance/starve mechanic: by putting all needs in on basket, and having only to satisfy the necessary morale requirement from skill points, you only have not to overspend these skillpoints. While in the early access experience, every exigence not satisfed (food, decor, shower) created surplus stress which was mostly negated by overstifying an other exigence or using mass table to reduce pics of stress. Mass table isn't even used once in a game anymore. You can chose your own difficulty by imposing yourself limitations, but having to get rid of most of your tools to feel a bit of hardness (farming, steam turbine&aqua tunner/thermoregulator for temperature management and geyser usage) is not sign of a good difficulty balance.

I don't own Spaced Out as I only came back to the game several days ago so I can't argue about its inherent difficulty, but I guess the decrease in difficulty on the base game is mostly due to its ressource splitting mechanics. And i don't abuse pip at all, i even avoid to play with them: it was more of an exemple how new critters (for me, as they weren't there last time I played) and multiplying wild plants can be totally overpowered. But even by limiting my farming early game, food generation isn't that much of an issue, thermoregulation has been made so much easier with steam plant and aquatuner/thermoregulator and ressource depletion isn't really a thing anymore.

With all due respect, I can't argue that having to heavily limit your tools available (restricting farming and most critter ranching, not using steam turbine/aqua tunner and thermoregulator for temperature management) to feel some hardship is sign of a balanced difficulty. I guess Spaced out, on the most difficult start can be challenging on max difficulty, but making the base game that much easier to compensate for its "optionnal" DLC added difficulty is a REALLY BAD design.

Edited February 16 by Neishahunter

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 2/16/2026 at 3:08 AM, Neishahunter said:

In Conclusion, it seems to me that the focus of the game switched heavily from survival focus

 

On 2/16/2026 at 6:24 AM, asurendra said:

First of all, you need to try hard difficulty settings. While normal mode is easy, yes, max difficulty changes things a lot.

 

On 2/16/2026 at 9:13 AM, Neishahunter said:

I already play on highest difficulty setting, but annoyingly except for the starvation slider , all the other difficulty sliders doesn't change much.

Alright. So... First, ONI is a game that has a really sharp learning curve.  When you first start, it feels insanely difficult.  As you play, things become easier.  You learn how to manage a variety of issues before they become problems ... until all of a sudden it doesn't seem like they're problems anymore.  For example, the first time or two that you set up a sauna or a steam turbine and have to figure out how to deal with broken pipes or overloaded wires.  Its a problem that only happens until you figure out how to deal with it, then it isn't ever a problem again because you know, going in, how keep your pipes from breaking or your wires from overloading.

There is also the fact that some settings make things a lot easier than other settings.  For example, if you run a Classic game with Rime as your primary asteroid and it has frozen core and large glaciers traits, you're gonna have a tough time even if you have dupes with Frost Proof.  It'll take a LOT of work to start producing enough heat to keep your farms and plumbing from freezing up in the early to mid game.  Or starting on a desolate asteroid with magma channels and volcanoes can be rough for exactly the opposite reason, especially if you start by exploring to look for a source of water.

You can also impose your own challenges into the game.  For example, I have a game I play periodically where I decided to never use Electrolyzers or Rust Deoxidizers.  It was really rough for a while until I got a polluted water/deoderizer cycle set up.  Its still rough to introduce a new dupe on that world because I have to increase production of polluted water and sand.  I have another game where all electricity is produced by plug slugs and solar, either directly or by the hydrogen they produce. I think I have a Saturn Critter Trap seed I got from the pod, but I never planted it  Running out of metal was definitely a problem in that world for a while, and still could be if I don't watch my power needs.

Finally, there are items that have come into the game over time that make some things easier.  For example with Bionics you can now produce power for your base before the end of the first cycle without using a hamster wheel or needing to get smart batteries researched to avoid wasting fuel, since metal power banks don't discharge unless the power is used.  That said.. it would be nice if you could easily enable/disable various expansions straight from the worldgen screen.  I have some older games where I can easily click to 'enable' the expansions, but the current method of disabling the expansions, restarting the game, creating a new world, exiting the game, re-enabling the expansions, restarting the game.. Yeah. Sux.

[asurendra]

3 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

That said.. it would be nice if you could easily enable/disable various expansions straight from the worldgen screen. 

But... You can.

[KittenIsAGeek]

6 hours ago, asurendra said:

But... You can.

Nope. I have none of the boxes checked and I have research and dupes available from any of the expansions.  Additionally, DLC specific story traits will show up, and seeds/critters from the DLCs will sometimes show up in the printer pod.  When I disable the DLCs, start the game, create a new map, and then save and close and restart with the DLCs enabled, the new map I created won't have any of the missing DLC features unless I click to enable it.

Spoiler

For example, if I click to enable The Bionic Booster Pack, then I will start to see Bionic Dupes show up at my printer pod and I'll be able to research and build power banks and dischargers.

What those options do is allow biomes from the DLCs to be generated in areas they normally wouldn't.  For example, you could get a Frosty cold biome instead of a normal cold biome on the default asteroid.

[asurendra]

Look. I switched off bionic box and now I dont have any bionic content in this exact safe. No dupes, no research, no nothing. 

41 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Additionally, DLC specific story traits will show up, and seeds/critters from the DLCs will sometimes show up in the printer pod

What do you mean by "DLC-specific story traits"? There is none of them. Do you mean geothermal pump? But it spawns only on ceres. And yes, you cant switch off FPP content on Ceres, because how you. 

 

44 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

What those options do is allow biomes from the DLCs to be generated in areas they normally wouldn't.

But bionics DLC doesnt have any biomes. But it still on list. Because its the way you supposed to disable it. You dont have to resart game to do so. Its too complicated and unnecessary

[KittenIsAGeek]

Weird!  I've created games with all those boxes unchecked and still had the research and items available.  In fact, my most recent game had everything unchecked, but within the game everything is available.  I guess I need to play around with it more, because if its working like you say it is, then either my system is borked or I'm misreading something somewhere.

Thanks.  I'll look into it.

[2tallyGr8]

On 2/19/2026 at 8:49 AM, KittenIsAGeek said:

Weird!  I've created games with all those boxes unchecked and still had the research and items available.  In fact, my most recent game had everything unchecked, but within the game everything is available.  I guess I need to play around with it more, because if its working like you say it is, then either my system is borked or I'm misreading something somewhere.

Thanks.  I'll look into it.

I looked into it myself, and appears that while you can enable the DLCs (excluding SO) after world generation, you can never disable them. If I had to guess, you probably either misclicked while adjusting the map settings, or misclicked when in the escape menu and enabled the DLCs.

I would imagine the reason DLCs can't be disabled is because there's no easy solution for any DLC content that already exists in the colony.

 

It's been a while, so I don't know if you've done it already, but I'm still posting this for future reference.

[Gurgel]

On 2/19/2026 at 6:14 AM, KittenIsAGeek said:

Alright. So... First, ONI is a game that has a really sharp learning curve.  When you first start, it feels insanely difficult.  As you ay, things become easier.  You learn how to manage a variety of issues before they become problems ... until all of a sudden it doesn't seem like they're problems anymore. 

That matches my experience. Player skill and experience is everything in Oni. The big thing is spotting problems early and having ways to deal with them. 

[SkunkMaster]

I'd argue the game has been made easier. 

With the removal of death on diseases, like slimelung (which used to kill the dupe after 10 cycles, if you did not treat them)

and adding geysers for almost every single resource. 

They then Released Spaced Out - but with bionics dlc you never have to leave the planet becase you can just make the data disks on surface with the super computer.

Not to talk about bionic dupes which don't need food and have a build in oxygen tank. Their meager 200w drain on normal is a complete joke, even 400w (on highest difficulty) is to low imo.

 

I'd argue the game has been made much easier with time, and even putting settings on max difficulty won't change much.

I play on Ceres, everything on max difficulty, i print a dupe every time possible for the first 100 cycles and the game still feels easy. Bionics dlc turned of cause that stuff is just busted OP...

 

I kinda miss the diseases that had a death counter attached to them, i wish we had a setting to enable lethal diseases. 

[hydragyro]

It's definitely easy to talk about these things. The challenge is... actually doing it. 

Let's see your base, where you implemented everything you've talked about. You know, food from wild plants and critters, oxygen exclusively from wild trees via ethanol and petroleum generators, nothing coming from geysers, never leaving the starting biome - on the highest difficulty settings, of course. Oh, and be sure to let it run for a few hundred cycles or so to show it's sustainable. It's all very possible in theory, let's see it in practice. Should be easy, right? 

On 2/16/2026 at 5:08 AM, Neishahunter said:

Now, in 2026, I am back in the game and I am really perplexed how the game feels. It is incredibly EASY: the stress has become a non issue, making the 3 main rooms (Latrine/Washroom, Barracks/Bedroom and Mess/Great/Banquet room make you immune to stress in less than 5 cycles. The early food limitation is inexistant, with all the critter available, ranching has never been easier , and the pip dirt generation and planting of wild plants even make the exploration of the asteroid almost pointless. With wild trees giving free wood leading to free biodisel with ethanol generator and so free polluted water with petrolum generator, you get  enough oxygen for your duplicant via filtering this polluted water and electrolizing the now clean water: you therefore don't even need to leave your starting biome to look for a geyser to oxygenate your base. The survival aspect of the game has become insignificant.

[SkunkMaster]

On 4/18/2026 at 4:17 PM, hydragyro said:

It's definitely easy to talk about these things. The challenge is... actually doing it. 

Let's see your base, where you implemented everything you've talked about. You know, food from wild plants and critters, oxygen exclusively from wild trees via ethanol and petroleum generators, nothing coming from geysers, never leaving the starting biome - on the highest difficulty settings, of course. Oh, and be sure to let it run for a few hundred cycles or so to show it's sustainable. It's all very possible in theory, let's see it in practice. Should be easy, right? 

It actually is easy. 

Use dreckos for food and pips to plant your farms.

Use arbor trees for wood, planted with previously mentioned pips.

build rocket silo for steam rocket for water. 

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

On 4/17/2026 at 2:52 PM, SkunkMaster said:

I'd argue the game has been made easier. 

With the removal of death on diseases, like slimelung (which used to kill the dupe after 10 cycles, if you did not treat them)

and adding geysers for almost every single resource. 

They then Released Spaced Out - but with bionics dlc you never have to leave the planet becase you can just make the data disks on surface with the super computer.

Not to talk about bionic dupes which don't need food and have a build in oxygen tank. Their meager 200w drain on normal is a complete joke, even 400w (on highest difficulty) is to low imo.

 

I'd argue the game has been made much easier with time, and even putting settings on max difficulty won't change much.

I play on Ceres, everything on max difficulty, i print a dupe every time possible for the first 100 cycles and the game still feels easy. Bionics dlc turned of cause that stuff is just busted OP...

 

I kinda miss the diseases that had a death counter attached to them, i wish we had a setting to enable lethal diseases. 

This, agreed.

Tbf, there were just as many exploits before as there are now (if not more exploits now because old ones never got patched). I am picky choosy when it comes to which exploits I use for this game. This game is pretty easy once you know what you're doing, but that shouldn't stop you from over engineering a solution to an easy problem.

Besides dying of starvation, I feel like my dupes never die of low oxygen, they just slow down work until I'm able to fix O2 generation. This is because of the exploits related to holding their breath.

Edited June 6 by BLACKBERREST3

[Gurgel]

There may be a bit of skewed perception here. The current beta water start is an easy one. I do hope they have a "survival unlikely" one in the workshop. If they do, I will go for that.

[GOLD875379]

I think that klei need to slow down on the early game and start dlc/updates and look more to the mid and end game now, take the new features that the dlcs added and expand to all the game (like the new backwall feature) and improve the complexity of the game. Klei can improve various systems of the game like the germ system (give me illnesses that can be dangerous to duplicants and remedies to cure them), why not expand what is possible to do in space (like an spacestation with a new research type or froms to improve the space mining), expanding or improving the genetic/mutation system, removing the scramble dlcs and adding a option as custom in the lab where you can select every asteroid and modify everthing like POIs, biomes, world traits, adding more astoireds to the same play even though this can be unstable (just give an alert but give the freedom to choose).

So in conclusion, i think the gave have nice features and of course i want more new things but i think that various contents of the game can be improved, involved with others systems and the complexity of the game become better and more challenging.

[BLACKBERREST3]

I wouldn't mind lethal diseases again.

[GOLD875379]

1 hour ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I wouldn't mind lethal diseases again.

debuffs or some type of effect that can cause some disturbance like the stress reactions in my option is options for this, lethal diseases i dont like too

[AugyBear]

5 hours ago, GOLD875379 said:

I think that klei need to slow down on the early game and start dlc/updates and look more to the mid and end game now...

...why not expand what is possible to do in space (like an spacestation with a new research type or froms to improve the space mining)

According to Steam, only 15% of players have entered the Oil Biome. 5.5% have launched at least 1 Rocket. 2.7% have completed the research tree.

It's not surprising that Klei focuses their DLCs and new features on early-game content, since early-game content is what 95% of the audience actually plays with. Even with the Spaced Out DLC that made rockets so much easier (you can speedrun your first rocket by Cycle 3!), players still choose to sit on the home planetoid, ranching critters, making farms, and focusing on low difficulty content.

If you wonder why the game got easier over time, it's because the overwhelming majority of players didn't think it was fun for dupes to die when they get sick, or constantly crash out from stress and start breaking things. I think it would be fun to add those difficulty features back in as optional features, but that would be a feature catering to <1% of the audience, so I totally understand why it's not a high priority item.

[BLACKBERREST3]

What we need is a doomsday scenario where we have to launch all of our dupes within a time limit or another asteroid crashes into ours XD. Or another where a solar flare threatens to heat up our world to extinction, but we might survive if we create a vacuum seal on the surface layer. Another scenario could be that a lethal disease rains down from the regolith that is impossible to get rid of without the furthest research/skill tree. I could see a bunch of challenge scenarios that could easily be added.

or modded

[AugyBear]

16 hours ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

What we need is a doomsday scenario where we have to launch all of our dupes within a time limit or another asteroid crashes into ours XD. Or another where a solar flare threatens to heat up our world to extinction, but we might survive if we create a vacuum seal on the surface layer. 

The Prehistoric Planet Pack DLC adds this scenario to the game. A giant meteor is coming to smash into the planetoid and you have to shoot it down with space missiles. If you don't, it destroys the top half of the map, fills it with lava, molten metal, and volcanoes, and sets off every geyser/volcano on the map.

They even added a challenge mode where the meteor arrives in 10 Cycles and your goal is to survive getting cooked.

[Electroely]

On 6/8/2026 at 6:37 PM, AugyBear said:

(you can speedrun your first rocket by Cycle 3!)

How in the world...? Can bionics really research that much and dig that far in 3 cycles?

[BLACKBERREST3]

21 minutes ago, Electroely said:

On 6/8/2026 at 6:37 PM, AugyBear said:

 

How in the world...? Can bionics really research that much and dig that far in 3 cycles?

yes, i’ve seen a vid of people doing it. he dug up at angles so he didn’t have to build ladders and used the CO2 engine.

[Jussatoon]

On 6/8/2026 at 3:37 PM, AugyBear said:

According to Steam, only 15% of players have entered the Oil Biome. 5.5% have launched at least 1 Rocket. 2.7% have completed the research tree.

It's not surprising that Klei focuses their DLCs and new features on early-game content, since early-game content is what 95% of the audience actually plays with. Even with the Spaced Out DLC that made rockets so much easier (you can speedrun your first rocket by Cycle 3!), players still choose to sit on the home planetoid, ranching critters, making farms, and focusing on low difficulty content.

If you wonder why the game got easier over time, it's because the overwhelming majority of players didn't think it was fun for dupes to die when they get sick, or constantly crash out from stress and start breaking things. I think it would be fun to add those difficulty features back in as optional features, but that would be a feature catering to <1% of the audience, so I totally understand why it's not a high priority item.

Any tips you recommend to surpass that point?

[BLACKBERREST3]

1 minute ago, Jussatoon said:

On 6/8/2026 at 6:37 PM, AugyBear said:

Any tips you recommend to surpass that point?

which point? early->mid->late

early game: i usually set up rooms for morale, dig a good sized space out of the sandstone biome, set up algae O2 box, set up mealwood as early food, and try to rush steel, refined metals, and plastics with dreckos.

mid game: set up cooling for the base, I end up using the water supply I research and refine metals with as I plan to destroy the heat/water, diggy diggy hole, tame some geysers and volcanoes, and focus on ranching and full sustainability

late game: after building some atmo suit docks, digging out most everything, I then focus on rockets, energy, and morale. Or you could focus on turning your asteroid into a water planet, you don’t have to go to space to beat the game.