Fly Kerbals to the moon, let them play among the stars

It's a new year, and a few more games are going free on Epic's PC storefront. Kerbal Space Program and Shadow Tactics - Aiko's Choice are free this week on the Epic Games Store.

From now until January 12, you can hop onto the Epic store and claim both Kerbal Space Program and the standalone Shadow Tactics expansion Aiko's Choice for free. These will add the?? games to your library for good, so even if you're not looking to play either one right now, just claiming it puts?? them both in your collection for later.

Kerbal Space Program is the infamous rocket-disaster simulator about launching small, unsuspecting Kerbals into orbit with your specially designed rockets. It's a straightforward concept on paper that's made more complicated when you realize it is, actually, rocket science. Playing Kerbal is a pretty fun way to learn about how hard it is to put a metal tube in s??pace, while also cackling when your plans go spectacularly awry.

Otherwise, Aiko's Choice is a standalone expansion for Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. The base Shadow Tactics is a fairly well-liked stealth tactics game, and Aiko's Choice is like a concentrated version of it. It's a campaign all its own, and doesn't require the base Shadow Tactics to play.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAa9Ao26gtM

Ground control to Kerbal Tom

It's a solid pairing of games for this week's Epic giveaway. Bot?h also sit in some interesting niches of gameplay, so this is really a good excuse to try them out without putting down any cash.

As for the next Epic Game Store freebie, the Store lists the impostor game First Class Trouble as its next upcoming game giveaway. That's expected to go live on January 12, ??and be available to grab through January 19.

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Enhanced Edition is a free upgrade for PS4 and Xbox One owners of Kerbal Space Program

The prospect of meticulously building vessels worthy of space travel with a gamepad, to say nothing of actually getting your crew to their far-flung destination, might've scared you away from playing Kerbal Space Program on PS4 or Xbox One. But if you've got the console version, there's now a free Enhanced Edition upgrade available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, which includes mouse and keyboard support.

//youtu.be/LBFCA48fUqE

This upgrade is free, but it's a little confusing. Potentially. As someone with the base Kerbal Space Program on PS4, I first had to upgrade to the PS4 Enhanced Edition, and then I was able to get the PS5 Enhanced Edition. If I didn't do it in th??at exact order, the PS5 version would still show up on the PlayStation Store as $40 �the cost f??or brand-new players. So if you're wondering what's up, make sure you upgrade everything sequentially.

Beyond M+K support, the main draw of Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition is a visual and performance boost: "upgraded resolution, improved framer??ate, advanced shaders, better textur??es, and other performance improvements," per Private Division.

With today's launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, "This release brings our partnership with BlitWorks to a close," according to franchise producer Grant Gertz.

"The team at BlitWorks will be joining Larian as Larian Barcelona. We wanted to take a moment and thank everyone at BlitWorks who has helped us bring KSP over to consoles the last few ??years and wish them all the best on their new adventures."

As for current and future PC updates, and how they'll fit in with Kerbal Space Program on PS5 and XSX, the team is "committed to bringing patch 1.11 and 1.12 to our console audience, and to support this we are?? creating new open positions to handle this development internally. It will take us time to get folks hired and ramped up, and we appreciate everyone's patience as we work diligently to bring this to you next year."

For anyone new to KSP, it's ?a patience-testing but very rewarding experience. Good luck!

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I hope it controls okay with a gamepad

Squad's space flight simulator Kerbal Space Program will always be best played on?? a PC (controls, mods, etc.), but I'm pleased it's headed to other platforms so more of you can experience it. There's nothing quite like it, and I'm curious to see how it fares with the con??sole crowd. Long time coming!

The PlayStation 4 version (shown above running at a not-exactly-ideal frame rate) will be out on Tuesday, July 12, with the Xbox One port also coming this month. Kerbal is still planned for Wii U "later this year," which is a pleasa?nt surprise. Squad hasn't divulged the price point yet, but on Steam, the game is $39.99; I'd expect the console versions to cost at least that much.

Part of the fun of Kerbal is trying, failing, and learning on your own, particularly when it comes to rocket building, but I would highly encourage new players to lean on Scott Manley's tutorial videos to get the ?basics down. He was an invaluable resource for me when I was first starting out.

Kerbal Space Program Launches July 12 on PS4 [PlayStation Blog]

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Houston, we have a problem

[Update: Squad has released a statement, denying all of the allegations below:

Regarding some recent comments made by former team members that caught community and press attention, we w?ant to share the following statement:

In Squad we are very proud of having a very united team, committed to creating a h??igh quality product, improving themselves as professionals, promoting and respecting the opinion of every member of the KSP community.

The com?ments made by those former team members does not reflect the reality of our company, but in Squad we will keep moving along with our commitment of respecting and listening to all of those who want to make constructive criticism about the company or KSP.

To be honest it's not the most ?helpful stateme??nt ever, so it's up to you to decide who you believe now.]

Indie goliath Kerbal Space Program has been doing very well for ??itself. It came out of nowhere, got over one million sales on Steam alone, has console deals, and even has endorsements from NASA. With succ?ess like that, everyone at developer Squad should be really happy, right? Wrong.

Multiple former employees of Squad have come forward to decry the studio’s alleged high amounts of crunch time, regular firings, and incredibly poor pay, leading to the community ??to question where all the money is actually?? going.

It started when someone claiming to be former Media Director PDtv took to 4chan and revealed all, saying their NDA had expired (you can see the imgur screenshots in the gallery below, just in case anything ever happens to that link). According to them, four prominent Squad employees were fired once the studio figured out their work could be offloaded to someone else. They also mention the standard salary for Squad employees was $2,400 annually, or just $200 per month.

While at face value it’s difficult to prove that what PDtv is saying is necessarily true and not just a grudge of a former employee, and so should only be taken as rumour, others related to Kerbal Space Program have since come forward and bolstered the story.

On reddit, r4m0n, a prominent modder in the community who has had significant amounts of contact with Squad, listed multiple problems at the company, including long crunch hours, poor pay, rushed releases to fit the marketing department’s whims, and poor communication between the studio and its community moderators. Meanwhile, former developer NovaSilisko said that, for the 10-??11 months they were th?ere as an intern, they were paid a grand total of $2,700, after fees.

Other former staff, such as former Community Manager Anthony “Damion Rayne” Keeton and Game & Server Developer Rob “N3XI5” Nelson, have decided to remain more tight-lipped on the issu??e, citing currently active NDAs preventing them from being ??able to talk.

It’s worth pointin?g out that Squad is based in Mexico, where the minimum wage is $100 per month. While the claims suggest Squad is offering double that is great for those based in Mexico, the studio also hires a lot of int?ernational staff, of which they still expect a full 40-hour work week.

$2,400 annually might be reasonable in Mexico, where the cost of living is lower, but it definitely isn’t reasonable to expect developers elsewhere to commit full-time to a p??roject when they could be paid that amount, and more, ??each month elsewhere.

So if staff are earning $2,400 annually, where are the rest of the funds for this massively successful game going? According to a Polygon feature from 2014 (before the game was finished, and before console ve??rsions were announced), Squad co-founder Adrian Goya was planning to form a new record label, and another co-founder, Ezequiel Ayarza, was hoping to have Squad produce a film he had written.

It’s not currently known if either of these projects are still in the pipeline, or whether attention has turned solely to Kerbal, but it’s still an interesting look at how the owners viewed Kerbal when many of these ex-employees worked there.

We have contacted Squad for comment on this issue, and will update if we? receive a response.

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Keep the YouTube app handy

I wouldn't want to play Kerbal Space Program on a console, but I am deeply interested to see how the silly (and also super serious) space flight sim controls with a gamepad. It's headed to PlayStation 4 and, as announced this week, Xbox One.

It's unclear if the full Kerbal experience will translate to consoles. It'll be tricky to support mods, for one. But even if the ports end up being lesser versions, I'm glad to see this style of game represented outside of PC. The more people that play Kerbal Space Program, the better.

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Science doesn't screw around

I might have never touched Kerbal Space Program had it not been offered as a review assignment. What ?a tremendous s??hame that would've been.

From a comfortable distance, I had seen enough of this hardcore rocket-building and space-exploration simulator to respect it, but I had also heard enough war stories to fear it (see: xkcd). "Maybe once it's gone through Steam Early Access," I'd always tell myself. That went on for years, up until last we?ek when Squad released version 1.0 on Steam.

Time to to get out of my comfort zone. If other people can stick with Kerbal ??and learn from enough failure?s to pull off grand space escapades, there might be hope for me too. 

Kerbal Space Program (Linux, Mac, PC [reviewed])
Developer: Squad
Publisher: Squad
Released: April 27, 2014 (version 1.0)
MSRP: $39.99

This is a game built to last. There are people out there spending hundreds of hours playing, learning, and teaching Kerbal Space Program and I'm not talking about some minis?cule group of superfans. It's the kind of game that, whether you like it or not, comes creeping into your mind when you're supposed to be off doing literally anything else. It'??s contagious.

There are a lot of deep, dense systems at play, and getting a handle on even the basics (knowing apoapsis from periapsis, prograde from retrograde) necessitates a commitment to learning real-world science and game mechanics before it "gets fun." I mean, sure, cobbling together a rocket, to use that word loosely, is enjoyable. At first. But then I came to realize what was possible in this sandbox and grew restless, forever in search of the next self-set milestone. However much effort you put into Kerbal, you'll get exponentially more back.

Early on, you're met with one humbling experience after another. I went into the tutorials all bright-eyed and cheerf??ul before the overwhelming reality of physics (my most dreaded subject in high school) came crashing down on me. The game's cartoon alien astronauts, the Kerbals, are a welcome sight. Their oddball expressions and mannerisms help warm up what would otherwise be a cold, calculated simulation. Not long into a training mission, one of them told me the job at hand "should be pretty easy even if you're not a famous rocket scientist like myself."

Not a moment later, there I was, licking my wounds and wondering why that Kerbal had turned my home office into a hou?se of lies. I'm not sure I've ever failed a videogame tutorial multiple times before. This is confidence-shattering stuff. My first hour or so is a blur by now, but I took no??tes along the way. "Intimidating homework," I summarized. Reading instructions, re-reading them, trying to do what they describe, failing, then repeating the process and inching slightly closer to success -- this is how it goes. Until, suddenly, it clicks. Bliss.

The first time my rocket lifted off correctly, I cracked a smile and laughed with astonishment. It was joyous. Incredible. Then the thing started spinning out of control and the Kerbals trapped inside were doomed. I knew it, but did they? Those poor, brave, totally naive little green men. Upon failing the lesson, my instructor said he wasn't expecting disaster to strike. Personal?ly, I had been counting the seconds. It gets better, though. You, the player, get better.

On Twitter, I was told to seek out community-made guides and I'll echo that advice. The in-game tutorials aren't nearly as clear or hands-on as I would've liked, and a lack of grammatical polish didn't make using them any easier. Walkthroughs and wikis might as well be mandatory. There are folks out there like Scott Manley who are producing exceptional videos, and I'd be so lost without them. The simple act of watching someone else solve a problem -- escaping the atmosphere without bu?rning an obscene amount of fuel, matching a distant vessel's orbit, saving a Kerbal lost in space (sorry!) -- can be enough to give you that edge.

Thankfully, c?onstructing rockets is simple. You drag individual components onto a 3D stage and snap them together. It's not quite building with LEGO bricks, but given the game's complicated subject matter, it is surprisingly close. Which parts you select for your ship and in what order, however, can be overwhelming. That's more of a problem in Sandbox mode, where you're given total freedom with a vast list of similar-looking pieces, than in Career mode, where new technology trickles in as you grow your space program from the ground up.

Another surprise: the controls are, relative to learning astrodynamics, not too tough to figure out. The user interface is initially confusing, what with all of the gauges and that intimidating navigation ball to monitor, but Kerbal Space Program makes smart use of the keyboard.

Cobbling together a bunch of ships and finally getting one of them to orbit the Earth-esque p?lanet Kerbin for the first time is an awesome feeling. As in, awe-inspiring. It's a big milestone -- one I won't soon forget -- but there are countless more to tackle. You can switch to a map of space to track your vessel's trajectory and set up maneuvers to reach, say, the Mun (moon), or an asteroid, or make the journey back home. Actually, you can do whatever you want -- this is an open-ended game, after all -- but maybe don't sprint before you can crawl.

For me, there is such a thing as too little structure in games, and for that reason I found myself switching back and forth between Kerbal's Sandbox and Career modes. The latter has a te??ch tree and jobs for you to take on. Newcomers will find its scope far more comfortable.

As you gain science points by conducting research in the field and transmitting the data to your base (or physically bringing it and your spacecraft back safely to Kerbin's surface), you'll unlock access to more advanced gear. As you complete jobs -- testing specific parts at certain speeds and altitudes, or taking tourists on a ride without killing them, for example -- you'll get funds to upgrade your space program. A third mode, Science, rests in betwe??en Sandbox and Career. You'll still have to earn new parts by collecting science points, but, unlike Career mode, you won't need to worry about your space program's money or reputation woes.

There are also several standalone scenarios, some of which were created in collaboration with NASA (get ?this game int??o schools!), that bypass the whole planning and building process and put you straight into an active mission. They're a great worry-free practice environment.

Outside of those core modes, there are numerous mods to tinker with. The game has attracted a passionate, talented, dedicated community of players and creators. Even if the developers at Squad stop supporting Kerbal Space Program with new con??tent and polish updates, I'm convinced this?? game will still be relevant a decade from now.

My main fear of simulation titles is that I'll get bored. But, come to think of it, not once was I bored with Kerbal Space Program. I may have felt confused, and irrita??ted, and hopeless at times, but those setbacks were fleetin??g. My desire to improve remains steadfast.

Even the smallest accomplishments feel like massive victories, and once you experience that euphoria, you ??won't want to quit. Watch your ambition soar.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by th??e publisher.]}

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This time your challenge is to land on an asteroid. And not explode

The makers behind Kerbal Space Program are teaming up with NASA to create an educational version of their popular rocket-building sim. I say "rocket-building sim" when KSP is more of a "build a cool rocket and watch it crash in spectacular fashion" sim. With the aid of Teacher Gaming LLC, the team behind KSP is going to make an educational version of the game to promote engineerin?g and science. Oh, and NASA's 2025 mission to? land astronauts on an asteroid.

That will be the goal of a new mission pack that is in development in association with the agency which will challenge KSP players to the limit. What's put me off the base game (and a lot of Steam Early Acc??ess titles) is the seeming lack of any goal apart from the ones you make yourself. With clear missions and set goals, that might offset my wariness. 

What's really interesting about Charlie Hall's feature on Polygon is finding out that Squad isn't even a traditional developer -- it's a Mexico City-based marketing company. Lead developer Felipe Falanghe had grown frustrated working on marketing projects and had threatened to quit. However he was given time instead to work on a prototype of Kerbal Space Program and the rest is history. 

To The Mun And Back: Kerbal Space Program [Polygon]

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One of the game's biggest updates

A substantial update has come out for Kerbal Space Program this week, adding Career Mode for those of us wanting more structure to go with the existing sandb?ox option. Too much freedom can be overwhelming, especially in a game about launching spacecraft.

As ever, this is a work-in-progress, but the end goal is to have players: "Hiring their own astronauts, doing Research and Development, building ships under a bud??get and taking on contracts to earn money and build their agency's reputation."

Update 0.22 focuses on the R&D a??spect?. Find the full patch notes below.

* Career Mode:
- Career Mode is now open! Although still very much under development, you can now start new Career saves.
- Sandbox mode,?? of course, is also available from the start.

* Research and Development:
- Added the Research & Development Facility to the Space Center.
- R&D allows play??ers to unlock parts (and later other stuff) by researching nodes on the Tech Tree (In C?areer Mode).

* Science:
- Researching requires Science, which must be earned by performing experiments during your missions.
- You can now collect surface samples while on EVA, and process them to do Science.
- Science experiments return results, which are different for each situation in which the experiment is performed.
- Experiments can (as all proper experiments must) be repeated over many different situations across the whole Solar System.
- Added a new dialog to show the results of experiments when reviewing the collected data.
- Added?? a new dialog to show a breakdown of all scientific prog?ress made after recovering a mission.

* Parts:
- Added new scientific parts, like the Materials Bay and the Mystery Goo™ Canister. Also added experiments to many existing parts.
- The old science sensors now have a purpose. They all have their own experiments which enable them to log scientific data.
- The antennas are now functional, and can be used to transmit science data back to Kerbin, if recovering the physical experiments is not an option.
- Antennas consume massive amounts of power when transmitting. Make sure you have fresh batteries in.
- Added a new deployable antenna, which is an intermediate model compared to the two original ones.
- Completely remodelled the Communotron 88-88 Comms Dish. The new mesh uses the same placement rules so it won't break ships that have it.
- Nose Cones now actually help with improving stability during atmospheric flight.
- Revised a lot of part values and descriptions, in preparation for them actually meaning something in the near future.
- Overhauled the la??nding legs and gears, they now have proper shock-absorbing suspensions?.

* Editor:
- Added a system to allow saving and loading of Sub-Assemblies.
- Subassemblies are subsets of spacec?raft, ?which can later be attached to other designs and re-used.

* Space Center:
- The KSC Facilities have all been revised, and feature new ground meshes and many other graphical improvements.
- Greatly improved the Island Airfield.
- Added lighting FX to several facilities. The Runway (among many other things) is now properly lit at night.
- Added a new backdrop and soundtrack for the Astronaut Complex Facility.
- Added a new music t??rack for the R&?D Facility.

* Flight:
- It is now possible to recover a flight after landing/splashdown on Kerbin without going through the Tracking Station. Look above the Altimeter.
- The SAS system was again largely overhauled, based on all?? the feedback we've gotten from everyone. It's now stabler than ever.

* Solar System:
- Celestial Bodies now support Biome Maps, which are used to create different conditions for experiments.
- Biom??es are currently implemented on Kerbin a?nd on the Mun, more will be added on later updates.

* Launcher:
- We've got a new launcher application for KSP, featuring a news bulletin, patcher management, and also allows you to tweak sett??ings from outside the game.

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Last year, I got to take a quick look at the in-progress alpha for an interesting little game called Kerbal Space Program. ?The game was cen??tered around building a rocket ship -- or, more a kind of rocket-propelled contraption -- to help propel some brave Kerbal astronauts into space and orbit.

It was somewhat limited at the time in that it did not have any targets for you to reach and contained only a small supp??ly of building parts by default. Since then, improvements have been made to the game and some new content has been added.

To start, there are a bevy of new stock rocket parts sitting around to mess with, such as fuel tanks, rocket booster??s, and control units. This helps allow for a much wider array of designs that can be made before going to mods. Each part has distinct statistics to define it; for instance, fuel-efficient thrusters may have lower thrusting power than previous ones. These parts seem like they are geared more towards use for the final phase of the rockets, the one in which you would put landing gear on.

And landing gear you will need. Newly added is the first target destination from the Kerbal homeworld of Kerbin, the Mun. Getting to the Mun is no small task, though. Considering how the game is based on real-w??orld physics, a lot of math governs realistic-feeling trajectories and orbits, as well as inertia. Getting off of Kerbin and throwing a ship into orbit took me a good deal of time when I last paid the Kerbals a visit. Mun, not so easy.

You can't just shoot right off the planet to reach this destination. You need to plan out trajectories, be very careful of your thrust and speed, and make sure to build a rocket with enough fuel to last the trip, yet also one that isn't so bulky that it will just fall back to Kerbin shortly after getting into orbit. When you do get c?lose to Mun, there's the ever tricky balancing act of controlling your descent, so th??at the rocket doesn't crash into the surface.

The journey doesn't seem like much on the surface, but it's a long and involved process that will probably make you go through a lot of trial and error -- even after watching a bevy of tutorials on how to get there. Luckily, you're also supplied with quite a few extremely useful tools to help you on your mission to Mun??, as well as to keep you from having to get an astrophysics degree just to play the game.

There's the same Stability Augmentation System units that were included in the build I tried out last year, which help control any fluctuation in?? flight path that would occur from an unbalanced rocket. There's also a wonderfully made space or orbit view mode. Not only does it show Kerbin, Mun, and any rockets you might have launched at the time, it also shows the trajectories each one is currently on. It even adjusts the trajectory in real time based on whatever thrust you might be applying to the rocket, which helps in knowing how much each boost will alter your path so you don't over- or undershoot anything. There are also markers that show up along the Gyrocompass that help you with relative precise orientation of your rocket's path and of nearby objects or planets that can cause a collision.

The game is shaping up well, and ran noticeably better on my co?mputer than the previous build I played. The addition of a target to hit and explore was something I greatly looked forward to, and it was a pleasure to finally get to d??o. However, there didn't seem to be anything to do on the Mun other than orbit it, land, and take off from it after that.

Oh, and you can roll your command pod around on the surface should you separate that from the rest of the rocket before setting down. There are a few issues with the game positioning rocket parts when you make obscenely big rockets, mainly related to putting things of?f center compared to the rest of the ship.

You can check Kerbal Space Program out for yourself at the game's website, and pre-purchase it, netting you the current release build and any up??dates that would come out after that. It's still fun as hell to watch a massive creation suddenly go out of control into a spectacular explosion, but having a goal like the Mun is pretty good too.

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