Kerbal Space Program 2

released on Feb 24, 2023

Kerbal Space Program 2 will create a whole new generation of space flight experts who will find themselves accidentally learning rocket science. New animated tutorials, improved UI, and fully revamped assembly and flight instructions allow both experienced and novice players to quickly put their creativity to the test without sacrificing any of the challenges from the original game.


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Incredibly rough start and still a long way to go but as it currently stands I think it’s good enough to take a shot at it, the new exploration mode is a great improvement from both Science and Career mode and will only get better with the next updates.
You can tell the devs are truly passionate about this game so I have high hopes for the future of this game.

You ever end up writing a 3000 word rant on your biggest ever gaming disappointment?



It's August 19th, 2019. My last summer break before I go to high school.

My 15th birthday.

It was an ok day. Some trouble arised and I wasn't able to go to my grandpa's house with some friends like we were planning to, and as such I just spent the day at home with some family members coming over after dinner, nothing special (to the point where some old messages might lead me to believe something bad might've made me think it was my worst birthday ever? Honestly I can't remember, and it doesn't matter).

That is, until around 11PM. While I wasn't aware, gamescom was also taking place at around the same time, and one of the projects announced there would go on to impact me in a way nothing else has since.

As I was wiping out my phone, a youtube notification popped in. "Kerbal Space Program 2 Cinematic Announcement Trailer". I was ecstatic, to say the least. Literally the best birthday gift that I, someone who has always been a bit of a space nerd, at the time thought I had and would ever have. A sequel to one of my little gaming obsessions. A sequel with all the features I could ever want! Colonies? Interstellar travel? MULTIPLAYER? All out of the box? Quite literally the game of my dreams, and it's releasing NEXT YEAR? Holy cow that is amazing!...

3 years, 6 months, and 6 days later. It's February 24th, 2023. I'm now 18 years old, and the second semester of college (and what would then be the lowest period of my entire life up until the moment I'm writing this) had just begun, and as I'm watching the game of 15 year old me's dreams release in real time in early access, what had seem inevitable to me since the system specs had been released is now actually happening.

If you've heard even a single thing about it, you probably know. It's a mess. Hell I'll even say that "mess" is downplaying it. It was awful, actually horrendous. Probably the worst release of an early access game I've ever seen. Content wise? Worse than KSP1 in its beta stage almost a decade earlier. Performance wise? You might as well just break into actual NASA to get one of their supercomputers and even THAT probably wouldn't be able to break 60 fps with a 1000+ part ship. Stability/bug wise? Literally hundreds of bugs found right at release. From locations done by mesh just spawning in completely random locations near the ship, to clipping through the ground constantly, to wings literally falling off planes when spawning into the most noodliest rockets known to man. To the maneuver creator barely working, from orbits just... decaying over time??? I don't think I need to keep spewing hyperbole here, it was truly a mess.

And even ignoring the issues that I just listed given that admittedly those can be solved, what was there was just, very underwhelming? Take the art direction for example, it is genuinely baffling. Everything is way too damn reflective. The parts look like they're made of plastic. The kerbals themselves look more Minionized than ever before. The UI looks hideous and near unreadable (I get it it's supposed to emulate how modern cockpits look, but I think they just took the aesthetic without actually knowing why it is that way? Like the text is all pixelated because it's just cheaper to have low pixel count displays on those, that shit is NOT meant to be on an actual video game UI, and this is just one aspect of it). I guess shit like the clouds and the atmospheric scatter look alright? But I reckon even they know KSP1 mods did it better because they literally hired a modder that was doing a volumetric clouds mod for KSP1. What a shock. And god don't even get me started on the Kurzgesagt-lite tutorial videos like god I'll have plenty to say about the tutorials later trust me.

Needless to say, it was all very disappointing. Especially for me, as up until the system specs were released I was literally IN THE FRONTLINES defending the team from every naysayer, and deflecting every red flag thrown at me left and right with what I can only describe now as excuses. "Oh the Take2 takeover was mostly the fault of Star Theory's management! Most of the dev team still went through to the new team!", "Oh the game getting delayed more and more is a good thing! It's just COVID that messed everything up! (Even though by this point most video game companies have already sorted their shit together)", "Oh the game will not actually run this awful at launch! It's just the Unity Debug Mode that runs worse!". All excuses that I remember spewing to this day. And even after the system specs were released, even after the mess of the launch, I was still willing to give the game a chance, albeit now with cautious optimism instead of blind defending, but even that didn't last very long.

9 months and 27 days later. It's December 20th, 2023. I'm now 19 years old, writing this paragraph in the college hall as I wait for the last class of this semester, as the impending deadline at the beginning of January for the main project and the following exams loom over. I'm a different man. I've played a lot of games. I've read some VNs that might've affected me emotionally in ways they had no right to do. Life could be better but... heh, it also could be worse. Even with all the new worries and things I have to think about, despite all the times I've told myself I would move on from this game, I just... cannot. It persists in my little noggin. I mean, it's no wonder I've decided to write this now, given that the For Science update just released, and like, am I supposed to think it's good?

Like, I haven't played it. Even with all the alleged performance improvements and the nice graphs their twitter account shared, I still doubt the game would break 60 at the lowest settings, so why even bother trying? And as I see ksp youtubers celebrating this update like the greatest thing to ever happen since sliced bread, I can't stop thinking to myself... is the bar that low?

Like, as far as I am aware the update is just... heating that as far as I am aware is worse than it was in KSP1 in certain key aspects (like visually for example, the heating effects look hideous), a "story mode" that is just the missions in the original career mode without the testing part missions and with """"""""""funny"""""""""" dialogue, and a progression system that is just... what the original's was 10 years ago (oh, but now some experiments take time! truly revolutionary and not at all a minor feature of many in the Kerbalism mod of the original, truly impressive Intercept).

And yes, there were a ton of bug fixes and optimization updates too, but there were also allegedly some regressions regarding other issues and... I'm gonna be for real, how much more can this game even BE further optimized?

One of the reasons I stopped defending this game at all is when I found out about something truly shocking, at least for me. One of the main appeals this game as a concept had was the fact that, well, it was an entirely new game! New game then, means new codebase, and if you know anything about the first KSP game, then you know a complete rewrite of the codebase was not only expected, but necessary for this game to run well, let alone handle multiplayer. HOWEVER, THAT WAS NOT THE CASE! As it turns out, data mining an Unity game is piss easy, and everyone quickly found out most of the codebase for the backend stuff was taken straight from a beta version of KSP1 (NOT EVEN THE MOST RECENT VERSION), so I guess this new game is at the end of the day just a glorified KSP1 mod, OOPS! A decision that was surely made at the time to cut cost on hiring actual engineers, has now backfired immensely given that now whoever poor bastard is working on this game over at Intercept has to worry about a decade of tech debt on a codebase made by a guy who wasn't even a programmer by trade at the time, fucking amazing! Amazing gambit sir Nate! Like are we seriously expecting the game that can barely handle a current late game save file at an acceptable frame rate (given a review from a KSP youtuber that I watched that got the new update early) will be able to handle shit that will be expected in a late game save of the game in its planned final state like:

- A lot of colonies running at the same time with multiple logistics paths of resources being transported left and right.
- A ton of interstellar mother ships which will probably have THOUSANDS OF PARTS EACH, WITH EACH PART BEING SIMULATED INDIVIDUALLY ALL THE TIME because yea thats a thing that totally should've been carried over from the first game (and not even mentioning that at the moment every single ship is being fully simulated at the same time regardless of what you're focusing on)
- And on top of all that, MULTIPLAYER, because yea THIS GAME, THAT IS BUILT ON TOP OF A CODEBASE THAT IS INCAPABLE TO HANDLE SUCH THING WITHOUT DOING A REALLY HACKY JOB, IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE MULTIPLAYER REMEMBER???

God what a fucking mess. And like I keep coming back to how they kept the old code base from the og game because... that's just a mentality that permeates throughout the entire game! Remember the noodly rockets bug I mentioned earlier? Well I LIED because it wasn't a bug actually it WAS A FEATURE. Local genius Nate Simpson apparently thought that the noodly rockets of the original game were... part of its identity!! So they kept that! And made it even worse! Together with a bunch of other flaws that really shouldn't have been in this brand new shiny game!! INCREDIBLE!!!

It's like these people are so scared of doing an actual sequel that they instead just default to doing everything the way the old game did, although maybe that's more due to laziness and lack of actual direction and not them just loving the og game that much. And the stuff they change/add... isn't that good either!!! Like the UI, forget how it looks, it's just so clunky and cluttered. Like what was wrong with the part info window? Why does everything need to be locked in a fucking list now that I have to scroll through instead of being able to organize everything the way I want across the screen? Why is the navball in a corner??? Isn't one of the big principles of UI/UX design that the most important elements always need to be at the center of the screen? If you wanted to make space to make it easier to see the rocket you could've just put it slightly to the side but still at the center! Why is the SAS assist command this ugly ass circle with a 3d model representation of your ship's orientation??? I already know what these symbols mean! Put these on a list that takes up less space like in the original! And if someone doesn't know what those symbols mean, then find a better way to do so because honestly i don't see how the way they've done it helps either. It's a goddamn mess.

And the priorities are just so all over the place. Even disregarding the fact that this game was very clearly not meant to be released in Early Access given that they've been working on every feature at the same time until close to launch instead of just building a good foundation first??? There's just so many... baffling decisions. Why are there so many simple QOL features missing? Why did we have to wait so long for a TWR reader in the VAB even though, as far as I am aware, that's literally something you can do in a spreadsheet in like 5 minutes. Or god the tutorials... why are there even tutorials in this early access release??? You know, the period where anything can change at any moment's notice??? Why not do those close to the full launch when everything is already set in stone?? Why waste resources on animations you might not even use by the time the game is feature complete??? And regarding the tutorials themselves they just suck. Disregarding the annoying ass YT Kids sounding narrator they are literally just .mp4's followed by the KSP1 tutorials again. No innovation, might as well just watch a Scott Manley video and learn the game that way instead (which some dudes from the PR team have LITERALLY SAID TO DO WHEN PEOPLE WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE TUTORIALS like god have I already mentioned how bad their PR team was throughout this entire ordeal? Genuinely such a lack of professionalism that I rather not get into it). You literally have the opportunity to do... idk?? Cool interactive lectures on physics concepts? You know?? Taking advantage of the fact that this is a VIDEO GAME?? But nah youtube videos have worked up until now let's just do that inste- GOD THIS GAME SUCKS THIS GAME REALLY SUCKS SO MUC

...ok I guess I could talk about stuff I like?? Uhhhh the sound design in general is excellent, props for that. Uhhhh the planets look nice? Not as good looking as some mods I've seen of the original but you know, they still look alright. And I guess being able to build multiple ships in the same workspace regardless of orientation is a good QOL concept? Wish it worked better tho...

... Look, I don't like to be negative, just look at my rating graph in my profile. Like god I literally gave UDG a 6/10 despite the fact that that game by all accounts sucks really fucking bad. Whenever I hate, I'm most likely just being deeply ironic at the main discord server I talk in, it's just not my thing to do unironically most of the time.

So... Why am I even giving more energy towards this game than seemingly its entire management team did? Why am I even bothering writing this 3000 word review about a game in a series that only I care about in all the friend circles I frequent? How many likes is this even gonna get? Five? If that?...

I guess it just comes down to what I said in the beginning. Even after this long, the space nerd kid still inside of me still wants... well not this game but the idea of this game to come to fruition. I want to be able to build giant complexes in distant moons. Building giant motherships which part towards far away stars, as I awe at both the immensity of the cosmos, and the beauty of the small specks floating through its milky vastness of nothing. For some people space might be frightening, but for me it's not. For me this setting itches that primordial instinct of mine that urges me to go out, find things, explore the unseen, and that makes me both afraid, and utterly attracted by the unknown. It's something I really wished to have but, this game ain't it. And I know about games like Outer Wilds and No Man's Sky that are kinda like that (if anyone uses NMS as a counter argument towards my sentiment that KSP2 has no future I'm crushing your skull with my bare hands btw), but... I guess there is simply nothing quite like Kerbal Space Program... I do still need to play those games at some point tho lmao.

Well, I guess there's that, if any aspiring dev teams want to make a name for themselves, maybe make the coop aerospace sim everyone wants! If you start now, maybe you'll be able to announce it in the same week as the inevitable apology from Nate about how multiplayer just "aint possible" and how they're instead just releasing the game as is (aka, soft canceling it and moving on to another fandom to grift).

And to any low level Intercept Games developer that just read through this, I really am sorry. I am sorry that you probably have to tolerate a bunch of passionless, directionless managers as you try to salvage whatever you can of this mess. In a way this is really what's wrong with the current industry. Not predatory microtransactions or buggy early access releases. Nah those are just symptoms. What is truly wrong is how much of this industry is led by people that just do not care for this medium, and only care about filling their pockets while the low level developers pull 24 hour shifts in order to pull yet another broken mess through the finish line. But while I could continue to wax poetic about the systematic problems of capitalism, I guess that's a bit out of the scope of this review.

I think that's everything I have to say about what is undoubtedly my least favorite game of all time, and I really hope I don't need to talk about it ever again (unless they somehow manage to turn this ship over, which as I elaborated, I don't think they will). May y'all have a pleasant day, and to end this review, and I mean this completely sincerely...


Fuck off Nate Simpson

Not a great state at the moment but has potential, I await its possible revitalization

So far, it has less features than KSP1, runs with low FPS, and has a glitch in every rocket launch.