Having slipped the surly bonds of Kerbin, Kerbal Space Program s former lead developer Felipe Falanghe has been quietly working on a new-but-similar flying craft creator, Balsa Model Flight Simulator. It shares some of Kerbal s DNA, letting the player build and fly model aircraft, but adds multiplayer and combat to the formula.

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Those of you chained to the churning wheel of the internet might have seen this facial recognition algorithm thingo doing the rounds. It’s called ImageNet Roulette, and it’s basically a website where you feed in a photo of your human face and see what the cybergods of our terrible future make of you. But it’s probably not safe to show the neurohive your real face. So we showed it 13 pictures of videogame characters instead, to see if the machine lords of the net realm can tell who they are and what they are all about. The short answer: not really, but sometimes. The neural net, it turns out, is a dangerous idiot.

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Kerbal Space Program 2 was not an announcement that we expected to appear with this year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live event, but it’s certainly one that caught everyone’s eye. This sequel to the much-beloved spaceflight simulator looks to improve upon its predecessor in a great many ways, from multiplayer support to colonisation and interstellar travel.

We’ll go through everything we know about the upcoming Kerbal Space Program 2 below, from release date information to in-depth trailer analysis, confirmed new gameplay features, and more.

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A sequel is coming for silly-yet-serious space build-o-exploration sim Kerbal Space Program. Blasting off next year, Kerbal Space Program 2 will add fancy and far-flung features including interstellar travel, space colonies, and official multiplayer support. This announcement seemed sudden to me until I remembered that the first game officially left early access in 2015. Four years ago! Goodness me. Come watch the sequel’s announcement trailer below.

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For a game about spaceships, Kerbal Space Program‘s latest expansion has a curiously terrestrial focus not to mention name: Breaking Ground. Out now, it doesn’t do much for spaceflight but does give more to do once you’ve actually landed somewher eout there. Along with new ground-based deployable scientific research gadgets, it adds surface formations to study and, most importantly, robotic pistons and joints and things. Remember: robotics components are for serious scientific expeditions only. Don’t get any ideas about building a giant mechanical tarantula to skitter around mission control. And if you’re using a mod to add multiplayer, don’t you and your pals have any ideas about starting a Robot Wars on the Mun. Science only, okay.

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There’s more Kerbal Space Program DLC on the way, and the next expansion for Squad’s jokey-but-actually-serious scientific sandbox is bulking up all things planetary. Breaking Ground is due out on May 30th, and is set to add more research sites across the solar system, with strange crystal formations, frozen volcanoes and other stellar curiosities to poke with sticks. Very big metal sticks, at that, as there’s a whole range of new components designed for planetside operations, including advanced robotics, ideal for carrying around new deployable scientific equipment.

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During my brief love affair with DIY rocket sim Kerbal Space Program, I visited the London Science Museum and came out having learnt genuinely useful lessons about when to use my second stage rocket boosters. I could have looked that up online (and yeah, I did that too), but isn’t that fantastic? I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have wound up in the museum anyway, but Kerbal had to have been on my mind when I was deciding whether to visit. Nice one, video games.

I’d sort of forgotten Kerbal existed since then, but today’s launch of its first expansion has blasted it back onto my radar. Making History is free for anyone who bought the game before April 2013, and adds a new mission builder that lets you devise fiendish tasks for yourself and other players. That’s the Making part: the History part lets you reenact landmark moments “from spacewalking to crash landing on the Mun”.

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Space catastrophe simulator Kerbal Space Program will launch its first expansion on March 13th, the developers announced today. ‘Making History’ is a clever little name combining the expansion’s two big features: a Mission Builder to make your own missions; and a load of spaceship pieces and missions inspired by real-world historical space exploration. I can’t imagine what those might be, given that Kerbal’s sandbox already leads to replicating most of the human history of space travel and the little it doesn’t mostly involves dead animals, but sometimes it is nice to have someone lay out a goal for you. As promised, the expansion will be given free to players who bought Kerbal early enough. (more…)

Reminding us all that the term ‘indie’ is meaningless, Take-Two Interactive–the multi-billion-dollar owners of GTA devs Rockstar Games, Civ and XCOM studio Firaxis, and 2K–have launched an indie publishing label. It’s named Private Division and that combined with the logo makes me think: Twin Peaks-themed porn site. But they have gathered a fair number of big names for their initial lineup, including Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey from the new studio of Assassin’s Creed creative director Patrice D silet, a yet-unannounced RPG from Tim Cain and his Fallout cohorts at Obsidian Entertainment, games from fellas who worked on Battlefields and Halos, and Kerbal Space Program (which Take-Two now own). Hey, if leads to good games getting made, wank yourselves wild with your indie fantasies. (more…)

“Beep beep beep beep,” said Leonard Nimoy, imitating his favourite piece of space hardware. But what is one voice in the vast night sky? You want yourself a satellite network, Len my son. That’s the focus of update 1.2 for Kerbal Space Program [official site], which launched last night. It lets players link satellites and other hardware to bounce and boost signals all over, and also use satellites to map terrain. Oh, and the update makes your wheeled vehicles and flying vehicles more stable, less prone to wonky physics explosions – unless that’s what you really want, of course. … [visit site to read more]