The little words have taken over my life and they are Kerbal Space Program.
It’s been a long time since a game like this has kept me wanting to go back for more. I can draw parallels to when the original Sim City came out and how it was used within schools and rumoured to be used in proper town planning. Even more strongly, it reminds me of Minecraft. Minecraft has a massive fan base and a massive mod community. It started out as a beta and gained momentum before being officially released. It is also used in a similar way to the original SimCity and has been taken up be planners and educational institutes alike.
Basically, KSP lets you design, build and launch space vehicles (both rockets and space planes). But then go beyond that and plan and perform full missions such as moon landings, planetary landings, comet diversions, placing space stations in orbit etc.
All of this is done in KSPs own solar system, and launched from your home planet of Kerbin. The planet is inhabitted by an enless source of Kerbals, cute little alien like creatures that you get quite attached to instead of just wanting to blow them up (which is still quite fun).
The game is difficult and deliberately so, although you don’t need to have a degree in astro physics as it is a basic version of gravity etc, but is realistic enough for you to find challenging. There will be countless times where you watch your rocket explode on the launch pad or the ignition kicks in to your rocket only to find it doesn’t move because it’s too heavy, but these are all counterbalanced by the sheer joy of performing a successful landing and return to Kerbin.
The game can be played in sandbox mode or Career mode where you need to fulfill contracts, earn reputation and and science points in order to unlock new tech.
Add to that the sheer volume of free mods already available and the game just sucks you in. There is always a minor tweak you want to make to help your latest rocket finally perform correctly or the desire to set up a fully operatikn base on another planet. And like Sim City and Minecraft, I can see it being used in eductional establishments. NASA themselves have already created an official mod for the game. Who knows, it me just inspire a new generation to get on with it for real, instead of being happy just to live looking at past lunar achievements.
Score
Veteran Gamers UK 