Set on an imaginary planet called Kerbin, cartoonish aliens, Kerbals, have shown a wonderful proficiency at spacecraft design and interplanetary flight. Players work with their Kerbals to design a working rocket, rover, aircraft or spaceplane using the set number of components.Once the vehicle is complete, you can begin testing it, starting with a launch. Launching will go wrong for the slightest error in your design and calculations: you can fail to break free of the atmosphere, have too heavy a rocket or too explosive a design, or it can all work perfectly: except you run out of fuel before you can make a safe landing and have to watch all your hard work spiral remorselessly to smash itself on the ground.

Because of the difficulty in getting the science right, simply achieving what in most other games is just the beginning, before the ‘real’ adventure can start, that is to say, a successful landing in your newly built spaceship, can feel like a real achievement. As, in fact, it is!

The whole premise of the game is building and flying spaceships and rockets into space, but this simple description belies the vast expenditure of effort that goes into getting everything just right.

If this all sounds a bit alarming, don’t panic: there is an extensive tutorial that has been expanded and improved since the game’s initial release that will get you going on the first baby steps towards rocket building. The tutorial doesn’t exactly make the game easy, it just eases you on your way!

Three Modes of Play

• Sandbox: With an unlimited budget, full access to all the ship parts and a vehicle assembly building in which you click to select a part, and click again to place it where you want it. Repeat until you think your rocket (or other vehicle of your choice) is complete and then click launch to test it out. From there, the world is your oyster: you can explore nearby moons, distant planets or head back to the lab to build another experimental rocket ship!

• Science: With this mode, you are limited as to budget and resources, and must develop your skills while being restricted and restrained. It is a fun way to test your ingenuity: seeing how to create the biggest, best, most functional rocket that you can without going over your budget and managing your time to conduct the experiments that earn you science credit and enable your budget and resources to be expanded a little more

• Career: This is more of a role playing version of the game in which you must manage not only the science but your employees and overheads too. You must complete contracts (like missions) in order to earn reputation points. Having a good reputation will bring you some money and even more contracts. As you work through the contracts, you cannot ignore the building which needs upgrades – completing these will get you more work, and so on

Kerbal Space Program for PC is available for purchase on Instant Gaming for a fraction of its retail price. You will receive an official key and be able to play the game in seconds. Play smart. Pay less
There are currently 4104 players playing this game on Steam