What does Away Team mean for the future of Oxygen Not Included?

[hydragyro]

The development of Oxygen Not Included so far seems to be following a pattern that was set by Don't Starve. 

First, there was Don't Starve. Then came Reign of Giants, a massive expansion that many players came to view as a fundamental part of the game. Then came Shipwrecked and Hamlet, smaller expansions with optional content. 
In order to add multiplayer features, the game had to be completely remade and the result was a new standalone game, Don't Starve Together. This had most of the content already present in the singleplayer game (along with new content and features) and the core gameplay was almost identical, so many players chose to play Don't Starve Together as a singleplayer game rather than Don't Starve. 
Finally, the development of Don't Starve was ended and now only Don't Starve Together continues to receive updates. 

First, there was Oxygen Not Included. Then came Spaced Out, a massive expansion that many players came to see as a fundamental part of the game. Then came the Frosty Planet, Bionic Booster, and Prehistoric Planet packs, smaller expansions with optional content. 
In order to add multiplayer features, the game had to be completely remade and the result was a new standalone game, Away Team. 

Needless to say, if this pattern holds, Away Team could mean the end of Oxygen Not Included. 

That's particularly concerning because it looks like Away Team is going to be a very different game from Oxygen Not Included. I'm sure it'll be a great game, but it's just not the same; it's not a colony sim and it'll never scratch the same itch. It'll also take years of development to get Away Team to anywhere near the level of depth and complexity that Oxygen Not Included has now, if it can ever get there. I think a lot of people will play both games and most will prefer one to the other, but I don't think anyone with hundreds of hours or more in Oxygen Not Included will choose to abandon it entirely in favor of Away Team, that is, unless Klei chooses to abandon it.  

Edited Saturday at 02:36 PM by hydragyro

[Alexander Block]

The analogy is wrong. DS and DST are essentially the same games, and there's no point in supporting both at the same time. ONI and Away Team - different games. The gameplay and design is very diffirent. ONI development can stop or slow down, but not because of the Away Team, but because the developers said everything they could say. They can't radically increase the difficulty - it will scare away new players. They can't radically change the mechanics - it will break the existing bases. Even if they make minor changes and some "abuse" breaks, the players are already unhappy. The developers are tied hand and foot, and cannot develop the game, but the Away Team has nothing to do with it. On the contrary, the Away Team allows them to "restart" the game.

[Zarquan]

6 hours ago, Alexander Block said:

Even if they make minor changes and some "abuse" breaks, the players are already unhappy. The developers are tied hand and foot, and cannot develop the game, but the Away Team has nothing to do with it. On the contrary, the Away Team allows them to "restart" the game.

I don't think people actually get mad about reasonable changes to the mechanics that break builds.  I generally see positivity in relation to big fixes and physics alterations, with most conversations being more about the ramifications and how to make existing builds work around the new physics.

I can't think of a time when there was actual unhappiness about a physics change.

Edited Sunday at 05:21 AM by Zarquan

[Alexander Block]

@Zarquan I remember dissatisfaction with the introduction of some DLC, and the changes in mechanics were minor. But I don't remember the details anymore. You also need to keep in mind that the most loyal players are on the forum, most of them will just write negative reviews on steam. I remember a lot of negative comments about Spaced Out.

Imagine if ONI actually makes radical changes in mechanics - reduce the size of the simulation cube so that 1 drop of liquid does not hold 1000 kg of gas. Introduce default darkness and make the debris take up space. They even turned off the diseases so as not to upset the majority.

[Zarquan]

8 hours ago, Alexander Block said:

I remember dissatisfaction with the introduction of some DLC, and the changes in mechanics were minor. But I don't remember the details anymore. You also need to keep in mind that the most loyal players are on the forum, most of them will just write negative reviews on steam. I remember a lot of negative comments about Spaced Out.

I was there for the Spaced Out release, and I don't remember that much upset-ness over the physics changes.  There was annoyance that you couldn't play on a large asteroid in Spaced Out, but that was during the beta when the game is still in flux.  The devs listened and added classic mode because that's how early access/beta play testing works.

Do you remember any particular topics (not actual discussions, but what the discussions were about) that people were annoyed about that might jog my memory? 

8 hours ago, Alexander Block said:

Imagine if ONI actually makes radical changes in mechanics - reduce the size of the simulation cube so that 1 drop of liquid does not hold 1000 kg of gas. Introduce default darkness and make the debris take up space.

If they reduced the size of a cell, single tile waterlocks would still exist, but they would be tiny and intraversable to dupes unless (assuming you are dividing it in to a 3/3 area like in Away Team) you were to make a 3x3 liquid stack, which is doable.  Unless they make the liquids "walk around" like they do in Away Team, in which case we would need to fall back to the p-trap style ones.

I'm not sure how they would go about making debris take up space in an ONI-style game without breaking it.  It works in Away Team because the characters themselves has a huge inventory that allows them to dig out caverns.

The thing I see people getting annoyed about are the longstanding bugs that the devs haven't figured out a good fix for yet, like certain heat bugs and mass deletion/duplication bugs.

8 hours ago, Alexander Block said:

They even turned off the diseases so as not to upset the majority.

See, that doesn't make sense with what you said before.  They can't make major changes without upsetting people, so they made a bunch of major changes to a  system to avoid upsetting people?  

[Alexander Block]

3 hours ago, Zarquan said:

See, that doesn't make sense with what you said before.  They can't make major changes without upsetting people, so they made a bunch of major changes to a  system to avoid upsetting people?  

They made major changes a long time ago. The diseases were changed around the release. The last major change is Spaced Out, and it failed (as measured by the number of completed achievements).

3 hours ago, Zarquan said:

Do you remember any particular topics (not actual discussions, but what the discussions were about) that people were annoyed about that might jog my memory? 

I don't remember everything, I judge first of all by Steam reviews, it seems they were around 70%, despite the fact that the main game is about 97%. 

It seems that there were absurd accusations that the game had become easier (although the whole difficulty of the main game was not to die at the start). They scolded the absence of meteor showers, rockets that were too light or too tedious, despite the fact that space in vanilla was dull and meaningless. You can go to the old Spaced Out reviews in steam and make sure.

[DolphinWing]

On 4/18/2026 at 10:23 PM, hydragyro said:

In order to add multiplayer features, the game had to be completely remade and the result was a new standalone game, Away Team. 

I don't think they make Away Team to enable multiplayers, instead they add multiplayer because the playstyle of Away Team can. They are fundamentally complete different games as @Alexander Block said.

[hydragyro]

On 4/18/2026 at 10:23 AM, hydragyro said:

it looks like Away Team is going to be a very different game from Oxygen Not Included

On 4/18/2026 at 6:41 PM, Alexander Block said:

 ONI and Away Team - different games. The gameplay and design is very diffirent. 

8 hours ago, DolphinWing said:

 They are fundamentally complete different games

 I'm glad we all seem to agree that Away Team and Oxygen Not Included are completely different games; Away Team does not fill the same niche as Oxygen Not Included, and so it wouldn't make sense for Klei to abandon Oxygen Not Included to focus exclusively on Away Team. I hope they think so too. 

[sakura_sk]

14 hours ago, Alexander Block said:

I don't remember everything, I judge first of all by Steam reviews, it seems they were around 70%, despite the fact that the main game is about 97%. 

The major hit Spaced Out got on release was because performance. Performance dropped for base game too but it was less evident. It has improved a lot since then but reviews were never re-evaluated.

The second main point people disliked was that it is not actually a DLC but an expansion with different gameplay than base game.

[CrutchPunk]

While thematically you could draw comparison of ONI-DS and Away Team-DST... but short of 1 Player vs Multiplayer that's about where it ends. It makes sense for players to favor DST over DS because they're virtually the same game (also why updates would stop for DS and continue for DST), it's just that one enables multiplayer. But ONI and AT are fundamentally different games. 

Personally, I see AT as a way to breathe even more life into ONI... It's going to add several new plants, critters, (dupes?), etc... IMAGINE THE MODDING POSSIBILITIES!  

[sakura_sk]

What are you talking about? AT means AquaTuner, right?

[Gurgel]

I do not think many people are really unhappy with the changes in Oni. There are always a few drama-queens that see the sky falling and everything going to hell. These people also think they are in the process if saving humanity and all that is good and proper, so they are loud. But they are not representative. For a more extreme version than here, just have a look at the Steam forums. There is a loud minority that post absolutely irrational things, such as if the developers have personally insulted them by the absolute trash they released. It seems some people just thrive on negativity. And this happens for basically every game there, even clearly very good ones. Do not listen to these people. They just want to rile you up and waste your time and make your life a worse experience. 

Klei has so far done an excellent job separating the complainers from the people that calmly explain a specific problem and give evidence. While I cannot be sure, I think I got changes made to ONI several times with this strategy. At this time, ONI is clearly better than in the beginning and it has gotten better with every major change. Yes, the people that loudly claim differently exist, but see paragraph above.