EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZqN54.png)
Much like my Pokemon Puzzle League blog (check my blog history if you're interested), today I thought I'd share another one of my favorite games besides Starcraft with TL. This one is something I discovered more recently, although earlier in development, TL already had a thread on the subject in Sports and Games:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=244666
Kerbal Space Program is following what I'm going to call the "Minecraft" model: start making a game, then start selling it in alpha stage, and just give the updates to people as you make them. In this model the "release date" is really an insignificant date; it's just another way of saying "we're going to stop updating this game now and start working on the sequel." In the meantime, they release the game very early, with very few features, and then build it as they go and release updates. If you download the demo, it is still in the .13 version of the game, but its still quite fun. If you decide to shell out $18 and actually buy it, you'll get the .16, which in addition to new features, you'll notice runs a lot smoother.
To talk about gameplay, I'd like to draw a comparison to this game:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8ZeDy.jpg)
I was one of the only people who liked this game. Or in other words, I was one of the only people that played this game correctly.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was a hugely unpopular game. It was supposed to be a AAA game, but it had two problems:
1) The gameplay was too complex and unintuitive for casual gamers to play.
2) More hardcore gamers remember the old Banjo Kazooie games, and as often as not were offended by the radical change to gameplay.
The gameplay of this game was primarily a vehicle construction game; you place engines, fuel tanks, wheels, weapons, wings, propellers, detachers, etc. on your vehicle. Then you take on a number of vehicle challenges with your creations and try to get Jiggies, in Banjo Kazooie tradition. They also included a number of preset vehicle designs, including a set of "blueprints" that you could buy from an in-game NPC and play with instead of your own creations.
Note that I said a "vehicle construction game," not a "racing game" or "car game" or "plane game" or "helicopter game." The fun of the game was in the construction, not in the actual challenges. The challenges themselves weren't especially interesting: Fight this dude! Race this dude! Carry this thing from here to there in x amount of time! If you evaluate the game as a standard racing game, you'd choose Need for Speed or one of the other AAA titles every time. Yet you can just buy some preset vehicle designs and play through the game like that. Many people did.
Or you can do stupid shit like this:
This does not complete any game objective, unless "being awesome" counts as a game objective.
One of these is plainly more fun than the other, which is why it baffles me that N&B got criticisms like "It wasn't really possible to beat the game just with preset vehicles, you had to eventually start making your own." If you played that game that way, you're doing it wrong.
So what's this got to do with Kerbal Space Program? Because KSP is also a vehicle construction game. It has a great deal more freedom and realism than the N&B vehicles, too; N&B restricted parts to a 3D grid, while KSP allows parts to be placed anywhere in 3D space, with sections of parts that allow them to fit together. The N&B engine mostly treats your vehicle as one object, and translates it rather than allowing asymmetrical designs to force spinning and other undesirable effects; in KSP, you get no such protection. But the heart of the gameplay is the same, and as such, so is the potential.
You are in charge of the underfunded space program of the Kerbals. You must construct rockets and space planes to launch into space. Achieve orbits, reach celestial bodies, land safely on the moon and return to Kerbin in one piece; or crash into the sun, if you like. Just, for heaven's sake, don't play this game the wrong way. Just like Nuts and Bolts, you can figure out (or look up online) a few stock rockets, then launch yourself into space and explore all the celestial bodies (right now there's two moons orbiting your home planet, and there's the sun; the next update is planned to add 4 planets and 6 moons). Once you've explored everything, you'll probably figure you've "beaten" the game. But damnit, this is a game without a win condition; there's no such thing as beating the game. And if you put that little thought into your rockets, you've missed the point entirely.
Create your own objectives: build a close orbit around the sun (within 20,000 km, for instance). Put a space station in the sky orbiting Kerbin. Land on the moon and get home, and if you lose a few guys with their ships too broken to make it back home, launch a rescue mission. Escape the sun's gravity, and then once your ship is far enough out, turn around, fire toward the sun, and see if you can get your ship to go faster than the speed of light (3,000,000 m/s, which should be impossible, but if their engine uses Newtonian physics, you might pull it off). The Kerbal Space Program forums posted a number of challenges to complete, and they'll create a list for each challenge of which people provided proof that they beat it.
And for God's sake, don't build ships like this guy.
Conclusions:
-If you play a sandbox game, recognize it as such and act accordingly.
If you play through GTA IV just doing story missions and then quit, you've missed the point. Go on a killing spree. Steal a cop car, shoot up some innocent people, have an all-out war with the cops, then try your best to escape while running down pedestrians and listening to the smooth jazz channel on the radio. Anything less is missing the point of the game.
-If a game doesn't provide win conditions, choose your own. And try to make them good ones; properly exciting, properly difficult win conditions are hard to choose, and can almost always be improved upon. Get creative!
-Play Kerbal Space Program (I won't make you play Nuts & Bolts).
The game in its current incarnation is easily worth the $18; and its still in alpha. As mentioned, the next released update is planned to include four new planets and six new moons. The developers want to add extra- and intra-vehicular activity for the Kerbals, docking with other ships, and training your Kerbals to perform various tasks within the vehicle instead of just sitting there while you manage everything. All things considered, $18 is a steal.
Edit: 0.17 is out! That means new parts, new UI improvements, and most importantly, new celestial bodies to visit!
), IVA cockpits and much more.
