I thought I knew the kinds of stories that would come out of Kerbal Space Program’s newest expansion, Making History. Now that KSP’s legendary modding community has access to all the scripting and planning tools it could ever need, I was sure we’d see recreations of the doomed Apollo 13 mission, recreations of Apollo 11’s historic moon landing, and probably even an interplanetary trading run inspired by the sci-fi TV show, The Expanse. 

It seems foolish that I never saw The Martian coming. Author Andy Weir’s story of a lone NASA astronaut stranded on Mars is a perfect fit for the focused, real-world-adjacent rocket physics of KSP. Using the new mission planner, KSP forum member Mikki recreated the drama of The Martian for brave Kerbals to suffer through. Behold: The Dunatian. 

A lot of really bad stuff happens to Kerbals in their pursuit of interplanetary glory. Burned, frozen, squished, smashed, pulverised—Kerbals die in many different ways, but they carry on, unfazed. At the start of The Dunatian, though, I swear that Bill is looking terrified. He’s been left for dead on Duna, the KSP solar system’s Mars analogue, and his crew and his ride home are months away, nearing the end of their tragic voyage back to Kerbin.

The mod kicks off right there, and there’s an immediate laundry list of things that need doing. Controlling Bill, I potter around in rovers, managing their limited batteries and trying to figure out a way to survive the cross-Duna road trip that I know (spoilers!) is coming for me at the end of the mission. 

KSP isn’t just an astronaut sim, though, it’s a space program sim, and playing The Dunatian gives me a whole new level of respect for the tertiary characters in The Martian: the NASA administrators, the Jet Propulsion Lab engineers. At any time I can jump away from Bill—which is good, since the main threat to his life is two years of crippling boredom—and manage the other missions that I’m juggling. I could have been designing my own ships for these flights as well, but frankly this mod would have taken me years to finish if I’d gone down that road. 

Luckily, the mod’s author included some gorgeous pre-made spacecraft for each flight in the mission, so I was able to spend my time piloting instead of building.

The multiple flights I’m juggling basically follow the plot of the book: Bill’s departed crew are coming back for him in their interplanetary vessel, and they need to resupply without slowing down into a gentle low-Kerbin orbit. I’m busy prepping that resupply flight and running through the intense mental maths involved in making an orbital rendezvous happen between two craft on dramatically different orbits. My supply probe ends up matching speed with the huge NASA ship, and I pipe over gallons of fuel as the exhausted long-range crew and the little robot probe rocket into interplanetary space together. 

While I’m stressing out about that, I also launch a long-range supply drop full of snacks to keep Bill alive for a few years until help can arrive. Seriously, I don’t care that this is fictional: NASA should be very proud that someone even imagined that they could pull off this many impossible tasks at one time.

Rendezvous

Real-world physics—or something close enough for government work—has always formed the backbone of KSP’s challenges and the thrill of its successes. I think the Apollo astronauts landing on the moon was pretty amazing, but it wasn’t until I breathlessly landed my own KSP lunar lander that I felt how amazing that journey was. I mean really felt it, down in my guts. In the same way, playing The Dunatian gave me an interactive, bone-deep connection to a story I’d already experienced through a book and a movie. 

While driving across the featureless, desolate landscape of Duna, I started getting bored and picked up speed, trying to make the drive finish faster. I was going beyond a safe speed, and it wasn’t long until a bump and a skid sent my precious rover rolling over, spinning parts loose and bouncing along a gentle trail of explosions until Bill was dead. I’d read and watched about The Martian’s main character’s incredible self-discipline, but for the first time I was being asked to exhibit some of that same patience myself. It’s good thing I’m an unrepentant save-scummer, or The Dunatian would have been a short book, ending with a rover crash in chapter three. 

I’ve spent a few hundred hours playing Kerbal Space Program over the last seven years, but even in my experienced hands the demands of rescuing Bill from Duna had me trying and failing for several hours. Long-time players of KSP can expect to finish The Dunatian in around five hours. Fresh new pilots should probably avoid this mod entirely. 

Recreating favourite pieces of fiction in a game mod is far from an original concept, and when I started playing for this mod I expected to spend my time celebrating a detailed historical re-enactment. I really loved The Martian, but I wasn’t prepared for The Dunatian to make me love it more, and in a new way.

Learn more about Kerbal Space Program's The Dunation mod over here. 

A piece of software called Red Shell that's used by game developers for marketing analysis has caused an uproar among gamers who are concerned by its ability to generate detailed "fingerprints" of users—in many cases without them knowing about it. 

"Imagine a game developer is running an ad on Facebook and working with a popular Twitch channel," the Red Shell website explains. "The developer wants to know which of those ads is doing a better job of showcasing the game. Red Shell is the tool they use to measure the effectiveness of each of those activities so they can continue to invest in the ones that are working and cut resources from the ones that aren't."

In other words, if you click a Red Shell tracking link and then launch the releated game, the developer is able to determine that the link led to a sale. The site states that Red Shell does not collect personal information about users, such as names, addresses, or emails. It doesn't track users across games, and the data it collects is not used for targeted ads. "Red Shell tracks information about devices. We collect information including operating system, browser version number, IP address (anonymized through one-way hashing), screen resolution, in-game user id, and font profiles," it says.   

"We have no interest in tracking people, just computers for the purposes of attribution. All of the data we do collect is hashed for an additional layer of protection." 

Those reassurances don't carry much weight in this Reddit thread, however, which begins by pointing out that users typically don't have a say in whether or not Red Shell is installed in the first place. Games using the software "may offer an opt-out for any type of data/analytics services they use," Red Shell says, but that places the responsibility for declining the software entirely on the user, and could be in violation of opt-in privacy laws—and that's assuming the developer makes the option available at all. 

The list of games found to be running Red Shell is surprisingly broad, and includes everything from indies like Holy Potatoes! We're In Space? and My Time At Portia to high-profile hits including Civilization 6, Kerbal Space Program, The Elder Scrolls Online, and Vermintide 2. Some developers have promised to remove the software, but there's also widespread insistence that there is nothing sinister or spyware-like about it. 

Vermintide developer Fatshark, for instance, described it as "no more than a tool we can use to improve our marketing campaigns in the same way a browser cookie might," while Total War studio Creative Assembly stated that it's ditching the software only because "it will be difficult" to reassure players that it's not being used for nefarious purposes. 

And some studios have said that they will continue to use the software despite the furor. ZeniMax Online, maker of The Elder Scrolls Online, said in a Reddit post that Red Shell was mistakenly added to a live build while it was still being tested. ZeniMax said it would remove the program, but added: "We are still investigating how to use this technology in the future to grow and sustain ESO more effectively. When/if we do so, we will give everyone a heads up with clear instructions as to what it is doing, how it is doing it, and how to opt-out should you so desire." 

Dire Wolf Digital, formerly of The Elder Scrolls: Legends, said something similar about the presence of Red Shell in its new project, Eternal: "Red Shell is not 'spyware'; that’s a scary-'Let’s-burn-the-witch!'-word that’s getting thrown around without a lot of information behind. No personally identifying information is collected anywhere in this process," it wrote. "That’s basically it; there’s nothing nefarious going on here, just some under-the-hood analytics that help us understand how our advertisements perform." 

Reddit's rundown games containing Red Shell as of June 18 is below, although I wouldn't be surprised to see more games added to it as people become aware of them—you'll probably want to check the thread if you want to be sure you're up to date. There's also a publicly-available Google spreadsheet that contains more detailed information on how each one was identified. For games that don't offer one, Red Shell maintains its own per-game opt-out option here.   

Update: Team17 contacted us on June 19, 2018, to say that Red Shell integration in My Time at Portia, The Escapists 2, Yoku’s Island Express and Raging Justice has been fully removed.

Update 2: On June 21, 2018, HypeTrain Digital contacted us to say that Red Shell has been removed from The Wild Eight and Desolate; CI Games informed us that Red Shell was no longer present in Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3; and Gavra Games said that it had been removed from Warriors: Rise to Glory.

Games which used Redshell which removed or pledged to remove it (as of June 18, 2018):

• Elder Scrolls Online (Pledged to remove it )
• Conan Exiles (Pledged to remove it )
• Ylands (Removed it )
• Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space?! (Removed it )
• All Total War games (Pledged to remove it )
• Warhammer: Vermintide II (Pledged to remove it )
• Dead by Daylight (Pledged to remove it )
• Battlerite (Pledged to remove it )
• AER Memories of Old (Pledged to remove it )
• Magic the Gathering Arena (closed beta, not on Steam) (Pledged to remove it for now )
• Secret World Legends (Pledged to remove remains of it )
• Hunt: Showdown (Pledged to remove it )
• Omensight (Pledged to remove it )
• Ballistic Overkill (Pledged to remove it )

Games still using Redshell according to community reports (as of June 18, 2018): 

• Civilization VI
• Kerbal Space Program
• Guardians of Ember
• The Onion Knights
• Realm Grinder
• Heroine Anthem Zero
• Warhammer 40k Eternal Crusade
• Krosmaga
• Eternal Card Game
• Astro Boy: Edge of Time
• Cabals: Card Blitz
• CityBattle | Virtual Earth
• Doodle God
• Doodle God Blitz
• Dungeon Rushers
• Labyrinth
• My Free Farm 2
• NosTale
• RockShot
• Shadowverse
• SOS & SOS Classic
• SoulWorker
• Stonies
• Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation
• War Robots
• Survived By
• Injustice 2
• Trailmakers
• Clone Drone in the Danger Zone
• Vaporum
• Robothorium
• League of Pirates
• Doodle God: Genesis Secrets
• Archangel: Hellfire
• Skyworld

The Humble Bundlers have unveiled the new Humble Monthly for May, which features Kerbal Space Program, Dead Rising 4, and Ruiner, plus more games to be revealed later, for $12. 

The Humble Monthly is a subscription-based program that offers up a different collection of games each month. A few "early unlock" games are revealed at the start of each month to whet your appetite, while the rest is held back as a surprise: Last month's bundle, for instance, started with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, God Eater 2 Rage Burst, and Mafia 3, and then tacked on Outlast 2, Lara Croft GO, Subterrain, Aer: Memories of Old, Laser League, and Lyric Sonata by the end of the month.

That's not bad for 12 bucks, and you can cancel whenever you want. Any games you've picked up prior to cancellation are yours to keep.   

Five percent of funds raised by the May Humble Monthly will go to support St. Jude's Children Research Hospital. It will be available until May 4, when the remaining games will unlock—which is why they call it the May monthly bundle, even though we're only in early April. 

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.

Kerbal Space Program's freeform rocket-building sandbox has attracted modders since the beginning, and after seven years they've crafted hundreds of additions—everything from planetary bases to ion drives. In this environment, what can Making History, KSP's first official expansion, offer players that hasn't already been done? 

Not its collection of real-life spacecraft, which is a curious inclusion given that space history is one of the most popular subjects for mods. For example, the expansion offers a pretty good version of the famous Apollo 11 lunar lander module, but this mod has had a picture-perfect recreation available since 2014. The expansion adds the slender, tapering Soviet R7 rocket fuel tanks, but this mod made them available almost four years ago. All of these new additions retread ground covered by free mods for years and years.

No, in keeping with what already makes KSP great, Making History's best addition is not an object, but a tool—a new way to experiment and create. The Mission Builder, which players can use to script and plan missions and stories using simple drag-and-drop tools, makes the expansion worth the money.

History making

For most of its life, KSP was a sandbox game. The only missions were the ones I made for myself: Hey, I should go to the Mun. I should build a Munbase. Contracts that reward players with money, science, and prestige in career mode were a late addition, and I've always found them to be the weakest part of KSP. Instead of focusing on big-picture goals like taking my first steps on distant planets, contracts have me duct-taping and kit-bashing single-use spacecraft to take a new landing gear to a certain height and speed, checking off a box to get paid. 

Contracts provided some goals and direction in the open world Kerbal arena, but they were never about telling stories. The new Mission Builder and History Pack (a set of pre-built missions based on space race launches) change that. For the first time, I can fly and build missions that follow a script.

In one of the first included missions, my Soviet spacecraft is suffering from a cascading electrical fault, and my only hope is to rendezvous with a nearby satellite and use its diagnostic systems to reboot. As I carefully fly over to the satellite, random systems explode, and my time begins to run out. After I finally get the computers to reboot, mission control throws me a curveball: Is there any way I could deorbit that satellite so the R&D team can see how get a look at the computer logs? Suddenly, I'm on a white-knuckle solo flight home in a satellite that wasn't meant to fly.

For long-time KSP players, improvisation and surprises only happen as a result of our own incompetence. Thanks to Making History, space can be an inherently dangerous place again: random failures a la Apollo 13 might cut a mission short; a freak micro meteor shower might puncture all of my solar panels, leaving a deep-space mission stranded until help arrives.

All of these variables are available to use in the Mission Builder, which is an excellent tool for scripting your own stories, as if you're a sci-fi dungeon master running a deep-space tabletop RPG. 

Everything in the Mission Builder is drag-and-drop. To script a mission to the Mun, drop a Spacecraft Launched icon and a Spacecraft Landed icon and draw a line to connect them. Start at Kerbin, land at Mun. Drop a score bonus and a time limit, and draw new lines to wire them in to the script. Start at Kerbin, land at Mun in less than 3 days. Zoom in a bit and tweak a menu option to make the objective more specific. Add a scripted event. Give the player a choice between salvaging precious data and saving a stranded Kerbal. Start at Kerbin with a ship weighing less than 40 tons, land at Mun in less than 3 days and plant a flag in the East Crater and your thruster tanks exploded so you can only thrust to the left.

The building blocks are simple, but there's no limit to how deep you can stack all the Mission Builder's scripted emergencies and radio messages. I've been astounded by KSP modders' technical skill and devotion to historical engineering minutiae, and I'm sure that will all be applied here—perhaps with minute-to-minute recreations of Apollo 11 driven by actual radio transcripts. These tools are powerful enough to do that.

There's also a lot of comedy baked into KSP. When you're telling a story about the Kerbals—slapstick doofuses that they are—the explosive incompetence of amateur rocket designs makes it hard for KSP not to be funny. Mission write-ups are common on the subreddit, and these chronicles, especially those that revel in constant missteps, are often charming and sweet. Given tools to catalog, share, and have other players replay their epic missions (or painful failures), this same community could become expert story scripters as quickly as they've become expert rocket scientists.

Despite the huge number of free mods, KSP's developers found a way to make their expansion valuable: They built a new set of tools that the community hasn't provided for itself. The KSP community is fantastic, and more ways to create and share space adventures is exactly what it needed. For the price, it's nice to also get the big dump of new, historical parts, but Making History is great for the making, not the history.