I think you should include the game Oxygen Not Included

Oxygen Not Included It is a science oriented colony management game. It is about creating sustainable colony in a hostile environment by working with science and technology.

Even if the game has fictional aspects and simplifications, it still deals and simulates a lot of aspects that would be true in a real world scenario. It includes multiple concerns for managing and coordinating "people" with their human needs in hostile alien environments where you deal with forces and elements of nature.

The game simulates many aspects of physics: Temperature Different Gases, liquids, solids Pressure Vacuum

As a player You have to contain and isolate gases, manage temperatures of different areas, supply enough oxygen for your colony, generate and store power, create a sterile and protected work environment, contain and deal with waste products, manage and build systems to pump around various gases and liquids to where they are needed. Make sure to not contaminate water supply systems.

Personally I find it very fun as a game while it also gives me an intuitive sense of many real aspects of physics and science in a not overwhelmingly complex way. I think this game may be suitable for people learning about science/physics.

This description is nice, thanks @erbemirbe.

Please use PR to add games, keeping the style.

Can you comment more on what you've learned playing this game? So far, feels like a stretch, personally - I don't think you could learn much about management and coordination from this game; physics - perhaps you can. Please do change my mind. I also don't know what stared thinks about how tight or relaxed the list should be, the description simply reads that things should teach something that is "advanced enough". Perhaps I am too strict and should propose more games myself?

@ThatScar Thanks for bringing this issue.

Well, the line is is somewhat blurry. But for instance, while a race car game involves a lot of physics, it does not stand out from other games as a science-based games.

When it comes to Oxygen (which I haven't played) - from description it does not tell if it is an advanced strategy game, or the management of resources stands out as a more advanced/realistic simulation.

Can you comment more on what you've learned playing this game? So far, feels like a stretch, personally - I don't think you could learn much about management and coordination from this game; physics - perhaps you can. Please do change my mind. I also don't know what stared thinks about how tight or relaxed the list should be, the description simply reads that things should teach something that is "advanced enough". Perhaps I am too strict and should propose more games myself?

Your goal as the player of this game is to govern and lead a team of duplicants (cloned human beings) to advance infrastructure and develop technology to get this population of dupes (dupe is short for duplicant) on a rocket away from the asteroid you find your team of dupes within.

The player controls the game by regulating the schedules, tasks and priorities of the duplicants. But you can't just tell them to do anything without first meeting their human needs. Like real humans they need: breathable oxygen, survivable temperature, survivable pressure, rest/sleep, food/nutrition, protection from physical harm to their bodies and protection from germs and polution and also to have some fun and socialize with other duplicants.

If the needs aren't met the duplicants have relatively appropriate responses. They can pass out or start shivering or fall spontaneously fall asleep and if you dupes are deprived of their essential needs, then they die.

Many of the aspects of these needs are of course simplified. Food, for example, is essentially just managed by making the duplicants eat something labeled as a food in the game and they'll survive (in terms of hunger). I don't think the game simulates various forms of nutrition.

As with all games and simulations, there are obviously some abstractions and also some right out fictional elements. The world is consistent of a two-dimensional grid of squares. Each square contains either a solid block of a specific material, an artificially constructed block by a duplicant (like machines and technology) or is "empty" (containing vacuum, gas or liquid). This, of course, is an unrealistic abstraction, but convenient as simplification to make the game playable and easier to manage.

Through this grid the player can select which tasks should be performed on which blocks in the grid, which which level of priority for the duplicants to perform their work.

All events takes place in real-time, or I suppose you could call it flowing time, as the player can also pause or speed up time (control the pacing).

What is good for learning in this game is that the player can quickly test out new scenarios and strategies, which develops their skill in completing the game, which I strongly believe, at least in essence, is aligned with understanding the underlying system and science represented in the game.

It teaches you how to manage limited resources. It teaches you basics of what is important to sustain human life in a survival situations. It teaches you non obvious nature of gases and liquids. That different gases changes form from gas to liquid to solid at different temperatures. That certain processes converts gases from one form to another (example: oxygen to carbon dioxide) That things generally take less space in liquid form. That gases can tend to separate in vertical layers. (stratification?) That it's not enough to just have oxygen in the available atmosphere, oxygen needs to be circulated in order to be breathable in all spots. That human temperature drops quicker in liquids. It teaches you that in a situation with limited resources you have to keep on gathering, isolating, converting resources, in order for a small civilization to be sustained. (otherwise people start dying) And that each person on your team is also a cost, in terms of consuming oxygen and food and that with more people to manage it gets harder to keep track of each individual's activities. Diseases spread more easily when people work a lot in the same spaces, and that it is essential to keep good hygiene, especially around human waste products (poop).

It is hard for me to highlight all of valuable insights I've gotten from this game, because it is very systemic in nature. I think the game provides some good intuitions about how certain aspects in science are correlated in a bigger picture.

Even if there would be no realistic take away I believe this game teaches the player how to manage a set of closely interconnected parameters in a complex system to achieve outcomes the player finds desirable. How to solve problems in a space of interconnected parameters.

I think this game could generate curiosity in students about the nature of the subject the game brings up. Maybe this game would be most appropriately played with a nearby teacher, knowledgeable in the fields related to the game (especially natural science), in order for the students playing this game to be able to have a dialogue about the nature and various aspects of reality that this game highlights.

If you are more curious about this game and want more understanding of what it is, I think it is better that you watch someone play it on YouTube, that you read documentation about the game or that you try to play this game yourself.

I still highly recommend it.

Thank you for the response. @erbemirbe A couple of your points are slightly off, most notably: "human temperature drops quicker in liquids" is very deceptive and removed from practical theory. Temperature actually drops much more quickly in solids because they have high thermal conductivity. The reason we don't experience this is because we are constantly separated from solids by a layer of air - we are not encased in solids like we are in liquids, which push out the air. Additionally, we are usually haired and clothed, which increases air gaps and reduces air circulation while wet hair and clothing "fits" more tightly and leaves less air (and, well, the air circulation part is largely irrelevant, then). So, your statement is only correct because "human temperature" is very specific since we are normally warmer than our surroundings and we have hair and wear clothes. Here's a quick video about thermal conductivity (not involving hair/clothes). More about your points at the end of my comment...

I have seen an hour or two of gameplay from various points in the game (not just the start) and the overall system is somewhat interesting but from what I've seen, the player interaction is mostly noticing that some people need is lacking and then tackling that problem; usually something simple like ordering to gather or craft more ingredients, draining pee from an inhabited area or building something like better shelter. This is also seen in many other games with resources systems, like Factorio. It is in the list but, personally, I haven't learned much from it that I haven't learned from better sources; maybe it somewhat reinforced some concepts about designing systems? The most similar game to Oxygen Not Included I've played was Frostpunk - it is mostly about limited resources and directing/management of a community, which is fun! but not enlightening.

Sorry for such ranting and so much denial but I like to be critical about things I like and I love this list @stared made. I could write a lot more about why this is so important for me but I don't need to - here is a lecture/talk which I broadly agree with (it's around 100 minutes in length; the video is longer because it includes a chat with viewers) In the video, it is said that some things are better learned from non-interactive media. All the mentioned facts and rules of thumb you got from Oxygen Not Included are better learned non-interactively, I think. The outliers are "how to manage limited resources" and "how to manage a set of closely interconnected parameters in a complex system to achieve outcomes the player finds desirable" - these are worth something to me, for sure! But... I kind of learn that from day to day anyways - living in a society involves a complex system and managing limited resources (money) every day :D This is a discussion so I'd like to hear your thoughts! And not just about including/excluding matters; if our opinions/goals don't match, please tell me more.

Two years later, I've finally tried it out. First of all, I'd like to apologise for my last comment, I was quite mean. I have already learned a bunch in Oxygen Not Included and it is quite educational... the problem is, it's also quite deceptive! There are a lot of opportunities to learn something that doesn't work in real life. It simulates a lot of real problems but only a part of real dynamics, taking big shortcuts. Like I've mentioned before, "temperature dropping quicker in liquids" is a real thing but it's simulated specifically to create this kind of problem and doesn't simulate any of the details there. That's only deceptive by omission - of course they couldn't simulate all of life and human society but there are also a lot of things that were designed for fun (because it's trying to be a fun video game) and, oh boy, there are many things more fun than real dynamics. Chemistry and biology are especially shocking and it's evident in those domains that they were trying to simulate real problems but took all the shortcuts. There are a bunch of "refinement" processes in the game and they are all science-adjacent: for example, using hydrogen to generate power is a real thing but it completely skips the part where it needs oxygen and produces water. Same for coal generators. Very easy to learn the wrong lesson if you don't know better.

I'll review erbemirbe's list once again on what the game does or doesn't teach/teaches incorrectly:

✔️ It teaches you how to manage limited resources.
❌ It teaches you basics of what is important to sustain human life in a survival situations.
❔ It teaches you non obvious nature of gases and liquids.
✔️ That different gases changes form from gas to liquid to solid at different temperatures.
❌ That certain processes converts gases from one form to another (example: oxygen to carbon dioxide)
✔️ That things generally take less space in liquid form.
❔ That gases can tend to separate in vertical layers. (stratification?)
❔ That it's not enough to just have oxygen in the available atmosphere, oxygen needs to be circulated in order to be breathable in all spots.
❌ That human temperature drops quicker in liquids.
✔️ It teaches you that in a situation with limited resources you have to keep on gathering, isolating, converting resources, in order for a small civilization to be sustained. (otherwise people start dying)
✔️ And that each person on your team is also a cost, in terms of consuming oxygen and food and that with more people to manage it gets harder to keep track of each individual's activities.
❌ Diseases spread more easily when people work a lot in the same spaces, and that it is essential to keep good hygiene, especially around human waste products (poop).

The ones I marked with question marks are problematic. Fluid mixing happens all the time and is easy to cause by the smallest temperature changes. As I am sitting in a room right now, I'd like to note that oxygen and carbon dioxide did not stratify from floor to ceiling, unlike it does in the game. Considering there's a lot of things to excite the gases in the game, it should not stratify in most rooms, so that's definitely wrong. But ventilation is a thing and, again, real problems are reflected in game but some shortcuts were taken by developers.

I'd like to note that insulation and heat exchangers are something I didn't expect in the game and are realistic enough that I can recommend it to experience that part and get an intuition. ✔️ I haven't seen any other game do it nearly as well. Otherwise, it's a great game about designing systems and that's a kind of good skill you can learn that I hope translates into other domains. ✔️

stared / science-based-games-list

I think you should include the game Oxygen Not Included #64