One thing I love about spaceflight simulator Kerbal Space Program [official site] is that I’m yet to find two players who’ve shared identical experiences. I’ve only ever played in short bursts myself, but mastering takeoff still heads my to do list. Others I’ve chatted with speak of grand space voyages and interesting discoveries. Heck, Adam even prefers the game as a spectator sport, which speaks volumes for its wide-reaching appeal.
Which is why it’s a surprise to learn that lead developer Felipe Falanghe has announced his departure from Kerbal Space Program after five and a half years of service.
After more than five years on the job, Kerbal Space Program Lead Developer Felipe Falanghe is moving on. In a farewell message posted on the KSP subreddit, Falanghe praised and thanked the development team and KSP supporters, but said, I desperately need to have something new, to create more than one game in my life.
KSP has become far more than the game I imagined half a decade ago. When we first set out to take on this project, I could not have expected anything even remotely close to what it ended up becoming, he wrote. To say KSP surpassed my every expectation would be, at best, a colossal understatement.
Kerbal Space Program is now conceptually complete, Falanghe explained, but its development is not. A long-term plan for the future is in place, with enough ideas to keep us all going for years, and he emphasized that his departure won't have an impact on any of it.
I need to make one thing perfectly clear: development on KSP will continue as always. No features, upgrades, bugfixes or anything of the sort are being discontinued because of my leaving, he wrote. This I say with absolute confidence, because I have complete trust in every member of the KSP team, and I know they are fully capable of handling anything that comes their way.
Falanghe, who showed us his rig in 2014, gave no indication of what he'll get up to next, although clearly he's not looking to get out of the game-making business. So while it's sad to see him leave, the prospect of Kerbal Space Program carrying on as usual, while the guy who came up with it goes off to do something new, does have a real appeal to it. And in case there was any question as to exactly how people feel about Falanghe and his game, another redditor created a word cloud of all the comments in the thread up to that point. It's pretty great.
One thing which makes Kerbal Space Program [official site] different from most, if not all, other space games is failure. In the short bursts I’ve played our Best Space Game of 2015, I’ve not saved the world or fought off alien invasions; I’ve struggled to assemble the most basic of rocket ships and have fumbled more take offs than I care to admit. My fleeting moments of success, though, have been great fun. The game’s “Turbo Charged” 1.1 update introduces a range of new features aimed to help amateurs like myself along, while also upping the challenge for those space veterans among us.