Kerbal Space Program studio Squad has finally brought development of its acclaimed space flight sim to a close, over a decade after the game's first public release.

Kerbal Space Program - which initially launched into early access via Squad's website in 2011 - gives players the opportunity to build and pilot their own fully-functional spaceships, rockets, and vehicles (while managing all aspects their alien race's quest for the stars if they choose), using actual proper science-y systems, from realistic aerodynamic to orbital physics.

Since leaving early access back in 2015, Kerbal Space Program has remained in active development, receiving numerous updates and expansions along the way - there's even a free "next-gen" update for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S due this autumn. However, Squad has now confirmed - after warning players the space flight sim's 1.12 update would be its last major release back in June - that its decade-plus-long journey is officially at an end.

Read more

UPDATE: The game's creative director, Nate Simpson, clarified Kerbal Space Program 2 will be released in 2022.

Simpson shared the target in a letter to the community about the delay on the game's forum.

"Gonna rip the band-aid off fast here: Kerbal Space Program 2 will release in 2022 instead of fall 2021. I know this is frustrating, especially considering that this isn't the first time we've adjusted our schedule," he wrote.

Read more

Take-Two pulled the development of Kerbal Space Program 2 from developer Star Theory only to continue working on it in-house using team members it coaxed away after messaging them via LinkedIn.

That's according to a new Bloomberg report, which also details how Star Theory, with their Kerbal Space Program 2 contract cancelled, has now gone under.

Kerbal Space Program 2 was originally announced as a joint venture between Take-Two's publishing subsidiary Private Division and Star Theory, the studio behind Monday Night Combat and Planetary Annihilation.

Read more

Kerbal Space Program 2 was a surprise announcement at Gamescom 2019 - but it came as an even bigger surprise to the game's original creator. After leaving the first Kerbal Space Program team three years ago, Felipe "HarvesteR" Falanghe had no idea a sequel was even in development.

Before Kerbal Space Program, the developer Squad was a marketing company. But then Falanghe pitched an idea for a game about space flight simulation - and the rest is history. A few years later, Falanghe's brainchild was released to the world, and Kerbal Space Program became one of the most popular indies out there, even managing to catch the attention of NASA.

Falanghe left Squad in 2016, leaving upkeep of KSP to the rest of his team as he made a fresh start with a new game. In 2017, the Kerbal Space Program IP was acquired by Take-Two Interactive, and until this year, that was all the clues we had that something bigger was in the works.

Read more

After launching on PC earlier this year, Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground is finally coming to PS4 and Xbox One on 5th December.

The expansion boasts three new major elements for the Kerbonauts: "exploration, experimentation, and building new technology". Celestial bodies have been updated with new landscapes, and redesigned surface features which players can study to earn "insightful scientific data" to help on their journey through the solar system.

There's a host of new scientific tools to help the Kerbals collect minerals, study geological shifts and even measure atmospheric changes. Players will even have access to brand new robotic parts to make more complex machinery to help them on their travels - or hinder them on their travels, as Private Division's post definitely mentions something about "explosive failures".

Read more

A sequel to spacefaring simulation Kerbal Space Program is on the way from a new developer, it's just been confirmed.

Kerbal Space Program 2 was announced via teaser trailer during the Gamescom Opening Night Live press conference this evening.

It's due to launch in 2020 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - and that's all we know so far.

Read more

It's Indie Mega Week at the Humble Store right now, which - as you may have gleaned from the name - is a big celebration of some of the best indie games around, with the range seeing discounts of up to 90 per cent for the time being.

There are pages of stuff on offer in the Indie Mega Week sale range, ranging from smaller and more obscure titles to some of the biggest indie games released in recent years, and some soundtracks and DLC packs are even thrown in for good measure.

Some of the most notable games on offer include 11-bit Studios' recent suffer-sim Frostpunk, which is down to 21.24 / $25.49, current Twitch favourite House Flipper for 13.16 / $16.99, the unrelentingly addictive Dead Cells for 17.59 / $19.99, and the closet thing we'll get to a Left 4 Dead 3 anytime soon, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 for 15.40 / $20.09.

Read more…

Space sim Kerbal Space Program gets its first PC expansion on 13th March 2018.

Making History adds a mission builder and a history pack, the latter of which contains missions inspired by historical moments in space exploration. Perhaps it's not too late to include a mission where you ride Elon Musk's Tesla to Mars!

Digging deeper, the mission builder lets you create missions that include launches, landings, rescues, malfunctions, explosions, repairs and more. As you'd expect, you can share your creations with other players.

Read more…

Humans have gazed up at the sky and wondered about their place in the cosmos since the very beginning. Do the same in a game like, say, Breath of the Wild, and you're presented with vivid images of clouds, stars, the sun and the moon. It's an important part of this and many other games that helps to create an illusion of a continuous space that stretches beyond what we actually experience within the confines of the game. The sky implies that Hyrule, despite being a fantasy world, is a part of a cosmos very much like our own, and we accept this even though we cannot fly up and check.

Since it matches our own experience of the sky so closely, we won't spend a lot of time thinking about how the universe around Hyrule is structured. There are quite a few games, however, in which the cosmos moves from the margins to the centre. These games take a close look at, for example, how their worlds were created or might end, the rules by which they operate, or simply how the experiences of the player fit into a larger world view. In other words, they create and explore cosmologies.

Cosmology, the attempt to describe the nature of the universe, didn't start with the advent of modern astronomy, but was present throughout all of human history. Always, real observations about the world were seen and interpreted through lenses of ideology and assumptions about how the world works (even our 'objective' study of the cosmos cannot help but be coloured by our very human perspectives).

Read more…