What happens next will define which of a constantly expanding set of branching possibilities you'll be sent tumbling down. You gingerly press the spacebar to activate the launch sequence. Your creation will wobble and shake, but, as long as you've adhered to basic symmetry, will usually stay standing.

Now you're no longer the engineer, but the pilot. If you want to get really fancy, you can rotate and offset parts, or place multiple of the same piece symmetrically around the existing build.Īll done? OK, click on the launch button and your construction is moved to the launchpad. Move it towards a previously placed part and it will snap into place. Click on a component and it appears as a ghostly outline that follows your mouse. The Vehicle Assembly Building is a WYSIWYG modular editor that lets you easily add parts until they resemble something vaguely approximating a ship's shape. There are multiple different parts in multiple different categories, but you can make a functional rocket with just a few basic bits. What do you want to do? Well, go into space, probably. Step into the Vehicle Assembly Building and you're given a list of components. In it, you have an unlimited budget and full access to the game's many ship parts. Sandbox mode is the purest distillation of KSP's essence. That this all happened two years ago is why it feels strange to be reviewing the game now. The entire process-from failure, to revision, to hope, to euphoric completion-cemented for me why Kerbal Space Program is one of the best games on PC. Not a pat-on-the-back trophy, created to convey incremental progress, but the successful completion of a challenging, self-made goal. I tell this story because it remains one of my greatest achievements in a game.

Before descent, I transferred my Kerbal to a lander bolted on top of the launch payload (an over-engineered solution to my earlier fuel shortage.) Then I landed, and took one small step onto the surface.

Nevertheless, it held steady through the launch ritual: keeping straight through the initial 10,000 meter ascent, the smooth transition to a suborbital arc and the controlled burn at the 70,000 meter apoapsis, first to orbit, then out of Kerbin's influence and into an encounter with Mun. It was the result of a hundred inelegant solutions to unforeseen problems. The successful rocket was ramshackle and ugly. Out of the countless defeats and sacrifices eventually came the answer.

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