Oxygen Not Included: The Bionic Booster Pack Review Summary

Bionic dupes are fun, strong, and excel in space with unique needs, but the half-baked DLC suffers from buggy AI and excessive management.

Bionic dupes are strong and fun: Players widely report that bionic duplicants are powerful, fun, and introduce fresh gameplay. They shake up the colony-building cycle and offer new ways to play.

Bionics have unique breathing and needs: Bionic duplicants breathe only when needed, have deep oxygen tanks, and do not pollute the environment with CO2. They sleep less frequently than normal duplicants.

Bionics excel in space and hostile environments: With internal oxygen tanks, bionics can work in vacuum, unbreathable areas, and asteroids without atmosuits. They also excel in rockets due to no food requirement and longer work cycles.

DLC adds new buildings and tools: The Bionic Booster Pack introduces useful new buildings such as Flydos, data banks, remote work stations, and boosters. These additions expand automation and base functionality.

Bionics work well with regular dupes: Mixing bionic and normal duplicants provides flexibility and synergy, allowing colonies to leverage the strengths of both types. This combination adds variety and balance.

DLC lacks content and feels half-baked: The DLC is criticized for insufficient useful content, feeling pointless, and being the weakest compared to previous packs like Frosty. It adds few new biomes, plants, critters, or meaningful gameplay changes.

Bionic duplicants have poor AI and bugs: Bionic duplicants fail to craft or use available resources, play useless animations, and have pathfinding issues such as getting confused with atmo suit docks. They also refill oxygen tanks inefficiently or in dangerous areas, and repeatedly equip suits causing deaths.

Bionic duplicants are worse than regular duplicants: Bionics are considered worse in every way, with no significant advantages, and they fall behind normal duplicants in the late game due to limited skill growth. They are not rewarding and often seen as a burden.

Bionic duplicants require excessive management and resources: They consume large amounts of metal for batteries and maintenance, require separate facilities for eating and toileting, and have complex needs like oxygen, power, and morale. Mixing with regular duplicants doubles the hassle.

Bionic duplicants waste metal early game: They consume large amounts of metal for batteries and maintenance, making early game resource management difficult. Feeding 10 bionic dupes consumes nearly all metal before cycle 100.

Bionic Dupes Eat Batteries: Bionic dupes consume batteries or electricity instead of food, fundamentally changing the resource economy. They require power to function and can consume raw metals as an early-game power source.

Bionic Dupes Have Unique Needs: Bionic dupes have a different need structure than regular dupes, including morale and stress mechanics. They can still become stressed and suffer environmental debuffs like cold and burns, though they handle stress well unless wet.

Water Electrocutes Bionic Dupes: Bionic dupes receive electric shocks and become stressed when in water or passing through puddles. They react destructively to water-based liquids and hate liquid contact.

Bionic Dupes Need Oxygen: Bionic dupes store oxygen internally and must refill their tanks rather than breathing directly. They can breathe contaminated oxygen and can operate in unbreathable areas until their internal supply runs out.

Bionic Dupes Sleep Infrequently: Bionic dupes last roughly three cycles before needing to sleep, much longer than normal dupes. They require less downtime for sleep and fun, and some models produce microchips while sleeping.

Save-corrupting white screen crash: One player experienced a white screen crash at a specific point that forced them to reload a save from two days earlier. This is a severe progression-blocking issue.

DLC causes long-run freezes: With the DLC loaded, the game freezes and becomes unresponsive after surpassing 1500 cycles. This suggests a resource leak or performance degradation tied to extended play sessions.

Vanilla crash consistently reproducible: A player tested the game without mods and was able to reproduce a crash reliably. This confirms the issue is not caused by third-party modifications.

Crash from missing animation: A crash occurs when the game tries to load a missing animation during a resting action. This appears to be a specific asset-loading bug.

Performance issues introduced: Feedback indicates that recent updates or changes have brought performance issues. The lack of detail makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause.

Worth buying for fans: Long-time fans and those who own other DLCs consider it worth buying, a must-have, or a total recommendation.

DLC requires Spaced Out: Multiple reviewers state that the Bionic DLC should only be purchased after owning Spaced Out, and some cannot recommend it as a standalone addition to the base game.

Good for challenge seekers: Players who enjoy challenges, base optimization, and dealing with troublesome elements find the DLC suitable and enjoyable.

Not a must-have addition: Some reviewers find it hard to recommend, not a must-have, and not compelling enough to justify replaying the game.

Mods needed for playability: One reviewer states the DLC is not playable without player-created mods, and others plan to disable bionics.

Game completion: 100.0h.

Reports cluster around a difficult early resource-management phase followed by a more efficient and relaxed mid-to-late game, though some players enjoy the changed early meta immediately and a few abandon bionic-only colonies before progress.

Friction: Demanding early game; Raw metal consumption; Oxygen tank refilling; Keeping bionics charged; Advanced power setup requirement; Work-like grind in bionic-only colonies.

Unlock drivers: Mid-to-late game efficiency; Optimized and chill end-game; Dischargers for Spaced Out oxygen tanks; Sustainable power such as ethanol; Eco-Power banks; Mixed normal and bionic dupe starts.

ONI Veteran Systems Optimizer: Plans resource chains, races for sustainable power, and redesigns colony schedules and builds for new constraints. Motivation: Mastering new colony optimization puzzles and adapting the colony meta around bionic duplicants. Stance: buy.

Micro-Averse Automation Builder: Uses bionic duplicants to streamline routines, optimize late-game colonies, and accept a harder early game for a calmer end game. Motivation: Reducing repetitive duplicant maintenance so they can focus on building and work tasks. Stance: buy.

Content-Hungry Expansion Seeker: Benchmarks DLC against major expansions, builds large modules, and wants extensive robot customization and parameter tuning. Motivation: Getting a Spaced Out-scale expansion with deep new systems, goals, and long-term progression. Stance: no buy.

Monetization: The reviews center on a single-player game's paid DLC expansions. No reviewer describes an in-game cash shop, real-money gacha, loot boxes, battle passes, currency obfuscation, or paid power/convenience items. The main complaints are that certain gameplay features (drones, batteries) are gated behind DLC and that there are DLC-related crash/install bugs, while many players praise the DLC as trustworthy and worth buying. Per the scoring overrides, traditional DLC/expansion content and base-value complaints cannot raise the score above 20, and technical bugs are excluded from the monetization audit.

Little content relative to price: Players repeatedly feel the DLC adds very little compared to the base game, Spaced Out, or the Frosty pack, and that the content is scarce for the price. It is seen as optional rather than a true expansion.

Compared unfavorably to prior DLCs: The DLC is seen as providing less new content and less clear goals than Spaced Out and Frosty Planet Pack, which interacted more with existing content. It is considered the least dramatic and worst received major DLC.

Bionic pack contents detailed: The pack adds 6 Bionic Dupe Skins, 8 Bionic-exclusive skills, 18 Bionic Skill boosters, 2 Elements, 11 Buildings, 4 Power Banks as Food, 2 new items, 4 building skins, new clothes, and 2 achievements.

Fixes and improvements since release: Early imbalances, missing features, and installation issues have been fixed since release, and the Korean translation is now complete. However, some bugs remain and more polish is desired.

Lack of dedicated biomes or planets: Players suggest that dedicated biomes or planets for bionic dupes, similar to Frosty Planet, would have been more fun. They hope for future updates and quality-of-life changes.