Kerbal Space Program 2 (KSP2) was announced in August 2019 as the successor to the original Kerbal Space Program (KSP), first released in June 2011, with the final release in June 2021. KSP2 was initially scheduled for release in “early 2020”, but as is often the case in aerospace as well as software development, a series of schedule slips occurred, with an early access release scheduled for 2023-02-24.
In early February 2023, Private Division, publisher of KSP2 flew a group of prominent KSP players and space industry figures to the European Space Agency’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, where they could experience KSP2 on high-end personal computers and record their own experiences and impressions for release before the Early Access release was made available to the public.
Here is Scott Manley’s take on KSP2.
And this is “Everyday Astronaut” Tim Dodd’s deeper dive into the game.
(When they say “destroy”, they mean it!)
I will not be trying this game any time soon. The Early Access release is only compatible with Microsoft Windows 10 and some game consoles, and Fourmilab is Microsoft-free. Further, the hardware requirements for the game are much more demanding than the original KSP, with only around one third of users on the Steam gaming platform having systems which meet the minimum specified configuration and less than 4% using hardware with the “recommended” configuration or better. My 2017-vintage laptop isn’t even close to the minimum, although it runs the original KSP under Linux with no problems whatsoever.
As noted in the videos, experienced KSP players will find quite a bit missing from this first look at KSP2, including any concept of the “career game” which made KSP such an interesting challenge. We’ll have to see how these missing pieces are filled in as the game moves toward a full release.
