Invisible Inc and Don’t Starve developers Klei Interactive have announced Away Team, a 2D base-building game from the same universe as Oxygen Not Included. I have yet to play Oxygen Not Included, but Klei seldom miss – their Mark Of The Ninja remains one of my favouritest ninja shankfests – and Away Team already seems very appealing for putting a deeply inhumane emphasis on traitorous physics. Here be trailer.
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In offering a world in which “every tile is simulated”, Away Team is both daring comparisons with Noita and building on the volatile foundations of Oxygen Not Included, which Nate (RPS in peace) called “a machine for procedurally generating engineering problems, and due to the huge number of physical properties interacting in the simulation, they will never be the same twice”.
In Away Team, you are a solitary Oxygen Not Included colonist, aka Duplicant, who has mistakenly pushed a big red button and rocketed off to a strange new world. Equipped with a vacuum gun, you must explore the depths and craft your own abode from all the materials you find. You will need food and oxygen. Also, a working understanding of conductivity. And a very careful aim.
This is a realm in which every piece of matter is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. Liquids flow and evaporate. Fires spread, given access to flammable materials. I don’t remember things being so… temperamental in Star Trek away missions, but I would have happily watched a million episodes of a show in which Captain Picard spends 29 minutes gingerly carving out acid vats, then says “oh shit” just before the credits roll.
Away Team has yet no release date, but it does have a Steam page.