Oxygen Not Included 744825 on Mac

The game calls them duplicants. You call them your colony. Every minute in Oxygen Not Included is a loop of checking bladder fullness, stress levels, and who’s about to starve. You start with a handful of colonists, each with their own character traits, and a pocket of breathable air that won’t last.

You dig. You build latrines. You assign jobs. Colonists get better at tasks they repeat — a duplicant who digs all day becomes a tunnelling specialist, while another learns to cook or research. But ignore their happiness and they’ll protest. A stressed duplicant works slower, and a starving one stops working altogether.

Once the basics are stable — oxygen, food, a place to sleep — you expand. That means leaving the base to mine minerals in ravines, finding water, and setting up machinery like relaxation machines or advanced research stations. The colony grows, and so do the problems. A surplus of food buys you time, but one broken pipe or one missed task can tip it all.

Starting a new colony: a walkthrough

Pick an asteroid and let the game generate your map. Your first job is to find a spot for a latrine and a mess table. Dig a small room for each — rooms matter in this game. A latrine in a room gives a morale bonus. A mess table in a room gives another. Place a water pump and a research station nearby. You need basic oxygen research before your starting air runs out.

Assign one duplicant to research full time. Another digs. The third builds. Watch their stress. If someone is close to a meltdown, build a massage table. It uses power and water, but it beats a duplicant throwing a tantrum and breaking your only pump.

When you have oxygen production running — an algae deoxidiser is the quickest — start looking for water. Dig down. Dig sideways. Find a pool and pump it back to your base. Then start a farm. Mealwood is reliable. It needs dirt, not water, and you always have dirt in the early game.

Keep your population small until you have a steady food surplus. Printing new duplicants is tempting, but each new mouth needs oxygen, food and sleep space. One duplicant too many and your algae runs out before you have a replacement.

Don't print too many duplicants too fast

The biggest one is printing too many duplicants too fast. Three duplicants are manageable. Four is a stretch. Five without a stable food source is a death sentence. Wait until your fridge has at least 20 000 kcal before you print again.

Another common error: ignoring gases. Carbon dioxide sinks. If your base has no pit or scrubber for CO₂, your duplicants will suffocate at the bottom of the ladder. Dig a pit early. Put an air pump at the bottom if you can. Chlorine and hydrogen also settle in specific places — learn which gas does what before you build your first sealed room.

People also forget to check duplicant traits before printing. A duplicant with Mouth Breather or Noodle Arms is a liability. Read the list before you confirm. A duplicant with +3 digging and a good mood bonus is a keeper.

Will it run on an older Mac?

Do I need a fast Mac to run this?
Oxygen Not Included runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon. It is not a demanding game by modern standards. The colony simulation uses 2D sprites and simple physics, so even older Macs handle the early game well. Late-game colonies with hundreds of critters and complex pipe networks can slow down, but that is true on any machine.

Is it the same as RimWorld or Dwarf Fortress?
It shares the same genre — colony management with individual colonists — but the focus is different. Oxygen Not Included is about survival systems: gases, liquids, temperature, pressure. You manage the physical environment as much as the people. RimWorld is more about storytelling and events. Dwarf Fortress is both, but with ASCII graphics and a steeper learning curve. This game sits somewhere in the middle.

Can I save mid-game and come back later?
Yes. You can save and load at any point. The game does not auto-save by default, but you can turn it on in settings. If you make a mistake — a pipe that floods your base, a ladder that traps a duplicant — reload and try again. There is no permadeath unless you delete the save.

This is not a game you win. It’s a game you hold together, shift by shift.

• This release is a hotfix.
• Fixed duplicants teleporting to the bottom left of the world after rescue and resuscitation.
• Fixed the Masterworks skill string to mention Masterpiece artwork quality.
• Fixed a gasket deconstruction issue that spawned the wrong element.
• Fixed a liquid rendering bug on older graphics cards.

• macOS – architecture: Intel and Apple Silicon

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