RimWorld and Oxygen Not Included both turn a small group of vulnerable people into a crisis machine, but they create very different kinds of crisis. RimWorld asks whether people can survive each other, the planet, and the events thrown at them. Oxygen Not Included asks whether your air, heat, plumbing, power, food, and waste systems can survive your design.
Both are excellent colony sims, but they reward different instincts. If you want social chaos, memorable colonists, raids, injuries, relationships, prisoners, animals, and modded storytelling, RimWorld is the clearer pick. If you want gases, liquids, heat transfer, automation, stress, toilets, power grids, and bases that fail like machines, Oxygen Not Included is stronger.
The core difference
RimWorld is a story generator first. Its systems are tuned to make colonists feel like people under pressure. A pawn's traits, mood, relationships, injuries, job priorities, addictions, ideology, and equipment all matter because they change how the next event plays out. The colony is not just a base; it is a cast.
Oxygen Not Included is an engineering puzzle first. Duplicants have stress and needs, but the base is the protagonist. The most memorable moments usually involve discovering that a temporary oxygen solution, a heat leak, a bad pipe route, or a poor power plan was quietly becoming a disaster.
Which has better colonists?
RimWorld wins for colonist personality. Pawns feel distinct because their traits, skills, relationships, scars, and mood breaks shape the run. One colonist being exhausted or angry can matter at exactly the wrong moment, and the game is good at turning that into drama.
Oxygen Not Included's duplicants are charming and readable, but they are usually less emotionally central. Their traits and stress matter, yet the larger question is whether the systems around them are breathable, powered, sanitary, and cool enough to function.
Which has deeper systems?
This depends on what kind of depth you mean. RimWorld is deep because many human, economic, combat, medical, social, animal, weather, faction, and base systems overlap. Oxygen Not Included is deep because a smaller set of physical systems behaves consistently and combines into complex engineering problems.
| Category | RimWorld | Oxygen Not Included |
|---|---|---|
| Main fantasy | Survive and tell emergent colony stories | Design a working life-support machine |
| Main pressure | Mood, raids, injuries, work, relationships, events | Oxygen, heat, water, waste, power, food, automation |
| Colonists | More personal and socially volatile | Useful, charming, but more system-facing |
| Failure style | A chain of human, combat, resource, and event problems | A traceable engineering mistake that compounds |
| Replayability | Huge scenario, storyteller, biome, ideology, and mod variety | Huge base-design and optimization variety |
| Best for | Players who want stories and messy recovery | Players who want systems mastery and redesign |
Learning curve and onboarding
RimWorld is easier to understand emotionally. A hungry colonist, a raid, a bedroom, a wound, or a freezer problem makes immediate sense. The difficulty comes from juggling priorities and surviving the game's pacing.
Oxygen Not Included is easier to underestimate. The early game looks cute and simple, then the base starts producing heat, polluted water, bad gas, stress, and power problems. New players often survive long enough to discover that the colony was built on temporary assumptions.
Which one is better for beginners?
Pick RimWorld first if you want the genre to hook you through stories. It is easier to care about a named colonist than a thermal loop, and the game gives you memorable events quickly. It is also better if you want a broad sandbox with combat, factions, quests, prisoners, animals, and heavy mod support.
Pick Oxygen Not Included first if you already enjoy automation, factory games, programming logic, physics puzzles, or base optimization. It is less about surviving a dramatic raid and more about learning why the base you designed cannot keep supporting itself.
Which one lasts longer?
Both can last hundreds of hours. RimWorld's longevity comes from scenarios, biomes, storytellers, difficulty settings, expansions, modded content, and the fact that every group of colonists can create a different narrative. Oxygen Not Included's longevity comes from mastery: better oxygen systems, cleaner power grids, smarter automation, heat management, rockets, ranching, and more elegant base designs.
RimWorld makes you ask what happened to the people. Oxygen Not Included makes you ask why the machine failed.
The best answer for many players is to own both, but not for the same mood. Play RimWorld when you want a colony story with personalities, combat, recovery, and chaos. Play Oxygen Not Included when you want a dense systems puzzle where every mistake can be redesigned into something smarter.