Ammo and Oxygen Review

Ammo and Oxygen is a top-down roguelite shooter developed and published by Juvty Worlds. It was released in Early Access on the 8th of November 2024 and has now reached its 1.0 update on the 7th of September 2025. It seemed pretty interesting from the trailer, so I decided to give it a shot. 

The story is simple on the surface: you wake up in a facility on a distant planet, alone (unless you’re in co-op, but that does break canon), with only various aliens running amok and corpses littering the floor. You don’t know who you are, what happened, or if there’s even a way out of this mess. But the answers are out there; you’ll just have to survive long enough to find them.

This isn’t an action-packed romp through an alien world, gunning down anything you see in your path. It’s more akin to a survival horror, where you’ll need to carefully manage your limited resources in order to make it through each area. Even though you pick up upgrades all throughout your playthrough, you never feel prepared for anything.

Well, this isn't spooky AF.

Your inventory will consist of a melee weapon, a pistol, a primary gun, and an energy weapon. They range from katanas, broken robot arms, SMGs, and assault rifles to grenade launchers, railcannons, and a BFG (Bright Fatal Gun). Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages, with the heavier weapons, like the sniper rifle and minigun, reducing your movement speed to a walk. Energy weapons are special as they essentially function as an ultimate ability, something you pull out if you need to win a fight fast. It’ll cost electricity to use and is only equipped for a limited amount, but it has infinite ammo and is often much more powerful than your standard weapons. It does feel like there isn’t much variety to the selection, though, and I tended to stick to the more plain options. However, you will need to pick up new weapons thanks to how limited your options are.

The main resources you should be worrying about are your, um, ammo and oxygen. Even with upgrades, you’ll rarely have enough bullets for more than a few reloads, and air supply is constantly draining. Without ammo pickups and spare tanks, your run will end prematurely. There are also batteries that are used to power your flashlight and any equipment you pick up. Run out, and you might find yourself losing all their benefits.

I just know this was caused by scientists trying to play with God...

That’s not all, though. You’re on the clock, as there is a day and night cycle that will dictate how utterly screwed you are. If you’re caught outside at night, expect much heavier resistance and with each day that passes, they get tougher and tougher. Taking the time to explore everything isn’t recommended. Although even on Day 1, enemies can be serious killers… when they aren’t getting stuck on geometry. They have rather simple AI, where their only tactic is charging straight at you and attacking for the most part. In exchange, they deal a lot of damage, even with meta-upgrades that increase your survivability. Again, going in guns blazing is just asking for a very pathetic death.

You can save both time and resources by practising stealth. I wouldn’t recommend sneaking up behind enemies to take them out (as they rarely go down in one blow), but if you keep yourself out of sight and don’t fire off your guns, you can pass by them without much difficulty. They can change direction quickly, though, so you have to keep your eyes peeled.

Try out any and every weapon available at the firing range.

The areas you’ll explore are often big, dark, and maze-like. Whether you’re outside in the wilderness, desperately trying to find the nearest facility, or inside trying not to get cornered by several dozen aliens, you might find yourself getting lost and unsure if you’re going in the right direction. However, there were times I felt the game just sort of hated me due to how areas are generated. One run ended because the only way forward was blocked by unbreakable props about three feet from the starting room. You can also get trapped in physics objects very easily. What’s meant to heighten your tension and keep you on edge only served to just make me annoyed, but as time went on, I just got used to everything not going my way.

I died quite a bit, but with each death came progress. When you die, you’ll lose all your power-ups, weapons, and credits. However, you do get to keep any DNA, scrap, and electricity collected, which are used for purchasing meta-upgrades, and you tend to unlock new power-ups too. Also, if you collect all the weapons of their category (except energy), you can choose the weapons you start with. No matter how much progress you made, there’s always something new you can play with, which feels really nice and takes the sting off some early deaths. Wanna come in with a katana, a minigun, and a revolver? It’s not recommended, but it’s possible! I think progress is done well here, as despite my struggles, I still came back for more to see if one more upgrade made a difference.

Now onto performance. The game ran perfectly well at 60 FPS at the highest settings possible, and the load times were quick. However, I ran into a few issues, mostly pertaining to using a controller to play the game. For one thing, the game will disable the control scheme you aren’t using, which is annoying, considering sometimes the confirm button doesn’t work. I also couldn’t use the shops for some reason, completely making credits worthless to me. I like switching between keyboard and mouse and my gamepad to play games, but this makes it way more trouble than it should be.

Alright, let's try again and have some FUN.

Despite not exactly being prepared for a survival horror-like experience, I enjoyed Ammo and Oxygen. You’ll need more patience than most roguelites demand of you, but it was a nice change of pace and makes every upgrade count.