PRESSURE SYSTEMS
Gas and fluid pressure as simulated quantities — atmospheres that equalize through openings, over-pressurized pipes that burst, vacuum that pulls, pressure differentials that drive flow.
- SOLO-DEV COST HIGH
- TIMING REAL-TIME
- COMMON IN COLONY-SIM · SIM · SURVIVAL · SANDBOX
Oxygen Not Included is the benchmark: gas pressure determines where atmospheres flow, high-pressure rooms resist intake, and colonists pop eardrums in over-pressurized bases; Space Station 13 and its heirs (Stationeers, Barotrauma's water pressure) simulate breathable atmospheres where a breached hull cascades into evacuating air and slamming doors; and engineering games price pipe networks by throughput and pressure limits. Designers simulate pressure because it makes containment a real discipline: walls stop being decorative the moment atmosphere equalizes through any gap, so base-building acquires airlocks, buffer rooms, and deliberate pressure management — an entire invisible architecture layer that rewards understanding physics rather than memorizing recipes. Pressure also creates the genre's best disasters: the breach that vents three rooms, the overpressure that bursts the pipe network, all legible in retrospect (the player can trace exactly what they built wrong), which is what separates instructive catastrophe from random punishment. Key decisions: simulation granularity (per-tile gas packets versus room-averaged pressure — ONI's per-tile choice enables exploits players celebrate as engineering), what pressure affects (flow, damage, comfort, machinery function), and diagnostic tooling — pressure overlays are non-negotiable, since the quantity is invisible by nature. Pitfall: pressure mechanics that punish without teaching — if the first hull breach kills the colony before the player understands air even moves, the system filtered its audience instead of training it; pressure games need gentle early leaks and loud feedback, because the mechanic's whole value is that mastery feels like earned physics literacy.
SEEN IN
- OXYGEN NOT INCLUDED
- STATIONEERS
- BAROTRAUMA