Rating: 5/5
In space, no one can hear you scream … Or laugh uncontrollably as your space capsule spins in a similarly uncontrollable fashion towards the planet Kerbin. Welcome to Kerbal Space Program. Half physics sandbox, half management simulator, you play this game as what appears to be an omnipotent overseer of a race of little green men called Kerbals. Their sole goal in life, it seems, is to explore their little corner of the galaxy by strapping themselves into haphazardly built rockets and hoping for the best. It’s your job to make sure they succeed by building, controlling and managing rockets, spaceplanes and whatever else you can imagine to reach the edges of space. Their lives are in your hands.
Kerbal Space Program is the product of four years of early access development by indie developer, Squad. KSP has left early access and is now a full game, but Squad has pledged to continually update and add features to the game. KSP comes with three main modes: Sandbox, Science, and Career, plus tutorials and a few scenarios to jump straight into the action, including a couple made by NASA. The main game mode is Career, where you have to manage different aspects of a space program including money, your reputation, personnel and any contracts you pick up to increase your income and reputation. You will also be in charge of building the rockets and spaceplanes to fulfill these contracts using a part lists and, finally, piloting the craft. Through this, you collect Science to unlock more parts, which you can use to build more complex and bigger crafts. Science mode takes away the need for resources, allowing you to concentrate purely on collecting Science. Finally, the Sandbox mode offers you everything unlocked, and lets you experiment without the fear of losing money and reputation if your craft ends up as a crater on any of the seven planets or moons.
The challenge of the game comes in the building and flying of the crafts that transport your Kerbals and even probes. You must balance fuel and mass, as well as methods of control. There are many layers of complexity, but there are many resources online to get you started, as well as the tutorials on how to reach orbit and beyond. This probably makes KSP the best education tool available for teaching orbital mechanics and rocket science. The game promotes trial and error as a learning method but, with a few utility mods, it’s possible to preplan everything using real-life science. Just be warned, this will ruin at least half of all sci-fi movies for you. There are a few problems when it comes to the physics and building, but Squad regularly releases game patches to fix any issues.
The game doesn’t look amazing, but isn’t terrible either. It has a cartoony art style, which doesn’t lend itself well to super-serious rocket science, but helps with the theme of trial and error. The Kerbals themselves are the most adorable little green men you will ever see and, although they don’t speak a word, their expressions are more than enough to see what they are thinking. Each Kerbal has their own personality and will react to events in their own way. Jebidiah Kerman, an icon of the series and your first kerbonaut, is always excited in every situation, which is adorable in its own way, and hilarious when you have any other Kerbal sitting next to him panicking. You will even feel bad for the poor guys as they inevitably become craters and explosions. The visuals certainly serve the game’s style well, even though there is the occasional graphics glitch.
If you are at all interested in space exploration that mimics reality more than most other space-related games, KSP is a must have. Not only that, it will teach you how to get into space. It’s an excellent title, but perhaps not for everyone: if you aren’t prepared to wait around for things to happen in flight (even with the time skip tool), and to work through constant trial and error, you might want to look elsewhere. But if this review has sparked any interest, it’s highly recommended you try the free demo available on the website.