Kerbal Space Program
First Impressions
Insert the obligatory “this has been on my backlog for years” comment here.
In May, I visited the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and saw the Saturn V rocket. That was a great experience and the kids loved it, so I decided it was finally time to play Kerbal Space Program.
I had procrastinated so long that Kerbal Space Program 2 was announced, so I figured I could hold a little longer to play the sequel. But then the studio was shutdown and the game is in limbo, so I figured I should stick with the original.
A few thoughts:
- I thought that this would be a great game to play downstairs after breakfast on a lazy weekend morning, so the kids could watch along and learn a little orbital mechanics. But that hasn’t really happened much, both due to a lack of lazy weekends and because the game is a bit too complex to hold their attention.
- I’m both surprised at how janky it is, but also how it manages to be very technically impressive.
- The game really throws you in the deep end, although I gather it’s better than it used to be. Although now that I’m up to speed, it’s a little bit better than I initially thought:
- Career mode is usually the place to start in games, but this game is an exception. It is the most difficult game mode and does not include a tutorial.
- The tutorials are easy to skip because they are independent and presented in separate modules, but they actually walk you throught the basics, so definitely start with those.
- Science mode is the way to go after the tutorials, because it gives you a lot of freedom to explore without the constraints of career mode. Earning science points and unlocking new parts is a good way to keep learning and gives some direction to your exploration.
There are so many great YouTube videos on KSP, and watching a few really helped fill in some of the gaps in the tutorials.
I also installed a few mods to help with the user interface and to add some quality of life improvements. Just vanilla-plus style mods, nothing that changes the core gameplay. The community is really active so it was super easy to get this setup (on Windows FWIW).
I’m still not very good at the game, but I’ve had a lot of fun so far and I learned a lot of orbital mechanics along the way. Hopefully my weekends will get more lazy towards the end of the year so I can play more.