Oxygen Not Included: The Frosty Planet Pack Review Summary

Fun, strategic, and often great value, though early difficulty, underwhelming new resources and critters, and thin content for the price hold it back.

Excellent DLC Value: Reviewers widely praise the Frosty Planet Pack as a worthwhile purchase, citing generous content, fair pricing, and strong entertainment value for the cost. Many consider it a strict improvement over the base game and a must-have for fans.

Fun and Enjoyable Gameplay: Reviewers consistently describe the DLC as fun, enjoyable, and a great reason to return to Oxygen Not Included. The new content provides hours of entertainment and feels like a meaningful expansion rather than a gimmick.

Adds Strategic Depth: The DLC offers new strategic choices, including alternative heating methods, geothermal power, and late-game engineering challenges. It reduces reliance on old crutches and encourages players to rethink colony design and resource management.

New Plants and Resources: The DLC adds new flora and fauna with unique resource loops, such as nectar-producing sugar trees, oxylite-producing plants, and mercury as a refined metal. These introduce novel production chains and survival strategies.

Novel Cold-Based Mechanics: The DLC fundamentally changes temperature management by making cold the primary challenge instead of heat, requiring players to keep the colony warm rather than cool. This inverted survival problem creates fresh strategic depth and forces reevaluation of established strategies.

DLC content insufficient for price: Many reviewers feel the DLC adds too little new content to justify its price, especially compared to the Spaced Out expansion. It lacks depth, new mechanics, and integration with the base game.

Early game overly difficult: The cold start creates significant challenges, such as water freezing, oxygen production issues, and slowed duplicants. Many players find the early game tedious and frustrating due to the harsh temperature effects.

New resources and critters underwhelming: New resources like mercury and ethanol are abundant but useless or inefficient. Critters lack variants, have poor synergies, and require excessive micromanagement, making them less appealing than base game alternatives.

Tedious and unfun gameplay: Many find the DLC tedious rather than fun, with low playability, excessive micromanagement, and mechanics that feel like chores. The cold slowdown debuff and ranching tasks are particularly unpleasant.

Integration with base game lacking: The DLC feels isolated from the main game, with new content and mechanics not integrating well. It often conflicts with Spaced Out, negating challenge, and lacks toggle options or compatibility with old saves.

New frosty biome content: The DLC adds a variety of new flora, fauna, buildings, and elements centered around a frozen ecosystem. This includes six new plants, three new animals, eight new buildings, and four new elements.

Temperature management complexity: Managing temperature becomes more intricate, requiring new strategies like heat eaters, insulated tiles, and warm coats. The temperature overlay may be less effective in extreme cold.

Cold as core challenge: Temperature management is reversed: instead of cooling, players must keep heat in and manage freezing risks. Cold acts as both a problem and a resource, affecting plant growth, ranching, and duplicant comfort.

New critters and ranching: New critters such as the wool mammoth rabbit, tusk seal, and deer-fox provide unique resources like wood, meat, and ethanol. They require specific cold temperatures and new food types.

New cold planet start: The DLC features a new starting asteroid or planetoid that is extremely cold, often below -30°C. Players begin in an ice cave and must adapt to the freezing environment.

Duplicate Printing Press Crash: Opening the printing press of duplicates causes the game to crash. This is a specific, isolated bug affecting one player's experience.

DLC Fails to Launch: The DLC cannot be played, while the base game or Spaced Out opens normally. This indicates a critical issue with DLC availability or compatibility.

Worth it for ONI fans: Many reviewers consider the DLC easily worth the price for avid players, calling it a complete no-brainer and a strong value. Support for the developer's ongoing updates is frequently cited as a reason to buy.

Skip in current state: Some players actively recommend against the DLC in its current form, citing disappointment despite loving the base game. They feel it needs polish or rebalancing before being worth a purchase.

Recommended with Spaced Out: Many reviewers recommend playing the DLC alongside Spaced Out for the best experience. It is seen as a good addition for those who already enjoy the base game and its first expansion.

Spaced Out highly recommended: Spaced Out is frequently recommended over the new DLC, with many suggesting players try it first. Some even recommend playing with Spaced Out enabled alongside the base game.

Recommended to buy on discount: Several reviewers advise waiting for a sale or buying the DLC as part of a bundle rather than paying full price. Casual players are especially encouraged to pick it up only when discounted.

Community fair range: $15.00 - $25.00.

The Frosty Planet Pack gives the early game a distinct but harsher start (harder oxygen, slowed duplicants, scarce wood), while its clearly praised payoff is the mid and late game content and temperature-management changes. Reports conflict, with some players finding the reshaped early game a fun novelty and others saying it never clicked or that progression drags.

Friction: Early game slows down duplicants and feels miserable; Oxygen production significantly more difficult in the early game; Very limited starting wood; Cold-adapted crops barely produce because they need freezing temperatures; Hydrogen coolant appears useless; Progression lags far behind a normal playthrough.

Unlock drivers: Temperature-management changes carry into the mid game and make it a fun change; New late-game options and content; Ice floors and limited wood make the early game feel distinct and novel; New critters and planetoid-specific content.

Thermodynamic Systems Optimizer: Min-maxes base layouts, exploits element thermal properties, and engineers cooling and resource-conversion chains. Motivation: Discovering new production loops and thermal/resource puzzles to optimize. Stance: buy.

Challenge-Driven Achievement Hunter: Targets hard-mode scenarios and achievement runs, treating harsh conditions as goals to overcome. Motivation: Pursuing difficult challenges and achievement completions. Stance: buy.

Loyal Long-Time Supporter: Long-term base-game play, patiently waiting for future content while buying to fund development. Motivation: Supporting Klei and the game's continued development out of long-term loyalty. Stance: buy.

Monetization: The user reviews concern the paid DLC's content-to-price ratio, mostly comparing it unfavorably with earlier expansions such as Shipwrecked and Spaced Out. There is no direct evidence that the game sells in-game purchases, real-money gacha, loot boxes, boosters, paid convenience, or paid power. The complaints are about traditional DLC value and gameplay mechanics, which fall under price or gameplay criticism rather than predatory monetization. The score remains in the Fair / Pure range.

DLC Lacks Spaced Out Scope: Many reviewers feel the Frosty Planet Pack has significantly less content and fewer new mechanics than the Spaced Out DLC, despite costing a comparable fraction of its price. This perceived lack of scope is a common criticism.

Modest Pricing and Value: Reviewers generally consider the DLC reasonably priced, often available in bundles with discounts, and some feel it is almost free. However, others suggest waiting for a discount due to the amount of content.

Adds New Planet and Creatures: The DLC introduces a new frosty asteroid, along with unique creatures like bammoths, wood-giving deer, and a fox with wood antlers. These additions provide new gameplay elements and challenges.

Developer Support and Updates: Klei is praised for continually adding content to the base game and working to fix issues. Players hope for future updates to strengthen the DLC's content.

Small Cold Ecology Expansion: The DLC is described as a small cold-environment ecology expansion pack, suitable for advanced players seeking additional content. It is not meant to be a full expansion like Spaced Out.