Greg Recommends The Kerbal Space Program

Price : $40
Store : STEAM

Take a rocket physics simulator and replace humans with little green men and you have The Kerbal Space Program. This is as accurate a rocket simulator that you will find outside of NASA, and while it is awesome it is not for everyone. The physics engine is unforgiving and bad design or incorrect timing can quickly turn into a fiery mess. This game is lots of fun to mess around with, but to actually do well you will have to learn some rocket science, and not everyone wants to do that. For those who do have the interest, patience, and sticktoitiveness this is definitely a game worth playing.

There are three modes you can play in, sandbox which gives you unlimited money and access to all rocket pieces, science mode which gives you unlimited money but restricts rocket pieces according to your research, and campaign mode which lets you earn money by doing missions and restricts rocket pieces the same way as science mode. You're objective is to explore the Kerbal System (Solar System). Why? For Science!

Every time you test out new equipment, land in a new area, or run science tests under new situations you earn science points which you can use to unlock more rocket pieces which will (theoretically) take you further into space to find more science! The game comes with a few 'pre-loaded' rockets and vehicles but the vast majority of what you will be using are things you put together yourself. Even though the first few rockets don't break through the atmosphere it isn't too long before you find yourself in space, high above the surface of Kerban with 0 Gs and lots of science to uncover. Getting that science (and your Kerbalnaughts) back down to Kerban is a bit harder than actually getting it in the first place though. Like I said, this is a realistic physics engine, and things tend to burn up upon re-entering the atmosphere. You'll want to make sure that your re-entry capsule isn't too heavy and that you have heat deflectors to keep the vital (and sciency) parts from getting damaged. You'll also want to make sure that you pack enough parachutes and that your angle of entry burns up enough velocity that said parachutes don't just rip off when they need to be deployed. I consider myself moderately competent at this game and my Kerbals still tend to die a lot in horrible horrible ways. Thankfully there's a reset button on the less punishing difficulties which allows you to start a given rocket flight over again from the beginning.

As you can imagine the game has a steep learning curve. The tutorials, while indeed useful and informative, don't hold you hand either. This game requires skill and patience to learn. But this is part of the fun, not just learning actual rocket science but also getting an incredible sense of accomplishment when you finally make a stable orbit or safely land on the Mun or any other celestial body and breathe a long sigh of relief when your intrepid Kerbalnaughts safely return back to Kerban with all their science. This game makes you work for your achievements, every launch, orbit, and landing is a potential nail biting experience, especially if something goes wrong or you're not sure if you have enough fuel to make it home...

Jebedia Kerman probably wishes the architects had gone with 4 landing legs instead of 3...
It will be at least 2 years before a rescue craft finds him on the surface of Duna.

Something you'll need to get used to very quickly is how to use your instruments. 'Eyeballing' your directions can be fun to do when your messing around but if you actually want to achieve orbit or land on the Mun then using your instruments is critical. The one I use the most is the spherical direction ball which has markings already in place for which direction you need to go to increase, decrease, or 'move' your obit as well as which direction to go to move towards or away from a marked heading. If you use these to guide you then you stand a much greater chance of success. If you don't then you will most certainly fail.

The other instrument that I use constantly is the nav computer which shows you where you are in relation to, well, everything, and what your orbit will be if you remain at your current velocity. This is especially helpful to gain a stable orbit around Kerban so you don't dip back into the atmosphere and even more important for when you want to travel to another celestial body. Since orbits are defined by the gravitational force of a planet, moon, or sun you are essentially expanding your orbit around Kerban to the point where where you will be at the height of your orbit is where the Mun will be so that you can enter into its gravitational field and adjust your velocity in relation to it instead of Kerban (doing this is what finally made Einstein's theory of relativity make sense to me). This is hard to communicate if you've never played the game before but you're essentially hopping out of one gravitational field into another. Thankfully the game lets you manually 'set a course' in the nav computer which creates an image of what your orbit would look like if that course was followed and an estimated time you would need to burn your thrusters to achieve said course. This is the rocket science I was talking about earlier.

Every rocket, space plane, and buggy can be created from scratch using the rather intuitive and fully customizable options of the rocket hanger. Pieces can be snapped or slid into place, rotated in 3 dimensions, or mirrored to be placed at equidistant intervals around another piece. You'll want to construct your spacecrafts in stages so that fuel tanks and engines can be jettisoned once they run out of fuel so as to not weigh you down and that parachutes can be deployed if you are planning on a return trip. You can create as many stages as you like using as many pieces as you like (once you unlock the final hanger upgrade) but the best rockets are (understandably) streamlined with multiple takeoff boosters arranged in 'asparagus formation' where all the engines draw from only two tanks at a time so that they can be jettisoned quickly and reduce weight evenly and most efficiently. (Once again, kind of difficult to describe if you haven't played the game).

You can also construct 'space planes' and shuttles that can fly with or without atmosphere, but I have not had very good luck with these for some reason and you need to spend lots of science to make them a feasible replacement for rockets.

For extra dangerous missions, or for missions where you can not make a return trip you can use a remote control system powered by batteries. This is where solar panels come into play, to keep unmanned explorers and satellites running. You don't get as much science broadcasting your findings back to Kerban as making a safe return, but the difference will be made up should you ever repeat the experiment / discovery and make the return trip some time in the future.

You can also 'build' space stations with crew quarters, science generating laboratories, and docking ports for space-faring vessels to latch on. I put 'build' in quotations because you will need to launch each piece into space and dock them together manually which is, without a doubt, the most difficult and patience wracking maneuver you can pull off in this game. Matching another object's orbit requires careful and precise piloting, but lining up to a docking port and actually making the connection in 0 Gs is an incredible feat. I will take this opportunity to boast that I have done it a few times.

For anyone looking for a realistic space exploration simulator this is as real as you will ever find for $40. For anyone else who is remotely interested in flying rockets to the moon this game will teach you so much about how actual rocketry works and you will (hopefully) have a blast while learning. What really makes this game for me is the challenge and the mechanics. In other space adventure games traveling to another planet is mindlessly easy (No Man's Sky) but in The Kerbal Space Program traveling to another planet is the game itself, you have to get there and get back in one piece and its hard, but doable. Once you make your first successful mission to the Mun you will feel like you've conquered the world and accomplished something impressive. The Mun is just the start though, there is a whole solar system ready to explore... for science!