If you’re designing a simulation game the most important step is figuring out what you’re going to simulate and what you’re going to approximate. Sometimes one of your rockets might fail to explode and you’ll find yourself in space. They’re still cheering when they’re crushed under a hundred tons of burning fuel and steel as the rest of the rocket lands on top of them. Miraculously, the crew survives the impact. The rocket rises up, then the command module breaks loose and falls back to the ground.The rocket rises a hundred meters, goes into a violent spin, and the crew lives just long enough to puke all over themselves.Now it stands up properly on the launchpad and doesn’t explode at all until you turn it on. You design a rocket, which falls over and explodes on the launchpad, killing all three of the brave Kerbanauts aboard.There are legends that some players have landed on other planets and then brought the Kerbals back again. Put a group of them on the other, smaller moon. I don’t even think I accomplished that much. I played the demo on Saturday, bought the game on Sunday, and the next thing I knew it was Friday and I was eyebrow-deep in orbital mechanics and rocket theory. Orbit the planet? Go to the moon? Throw a kerbanaut into the sun? Build a space-jet? Make a giant tower of fuel tanks and blow them up? Whatever. You’re given rocket parts, a space center, a solar system of planets and moons, and you’re left to find your own fun. Kerbal Space Program is kind of like a… Sim? Sim NASA? That’s as close as I can come to describing it using pigeonhole genre labels. It’s been a long time since I found a game this instantly engrossing.
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