Words alone cannot express how amazing KSP is.

To be honest, this is not a game for everyone. If you are in the market for some fast-paced "space combat sim" with all kinds of weapons and big explosions, then this isn't what you are looking for. (Except for the big explosions... KSP has you covered there).

However, if you ever dreamed of actually being an astronaut, this is definitely for you. If you sometimes forget to breath when watching recordings of the Apollo moon landings, this is definitely for you. If precise, measured flying; careful planning; and delta-v budgeting are what drives you, this is definitely for you. If you want to learn about Orbital Mechanics and are dying to know what the Oberth Effect or a Hofman Transfer Orbit are, this is definitely for you. If you like Physics, this is definitely for you.

Optionally, if you just like building rediculously large rockets and watching them explode with glorious comedy when they fail catastrophically because you forgot ONE PART... then this is also definitely for you.

Kerbal Space Program is challenging, fun, frustrating, mind boggling, huge, hilarious, complicated, deep, and just plain awesome.

One day my daughter came home from school and asked me "Have people actually travelled to the Moon? How is it possible?"

Two years ago, I would have answered "yes, but I don't really know how. It's very complicated, with lots of math and science. You might learn about it in a physics class in 10 years time."

Instead, I answered "Here, let me show you." and fired up Kerbal Space Program. We built a moon rocket and launched it, me steering and she hitting the separation detonation buttons when needed. 30 minutes later we had landed on the moon.

Thank you, Squad, for enabling me to give that answer.

My 8 year old son broke away from Minecraft today. He sat on my lap while we made a rocket. He asked questions about rockets. We made it into space and he asked, "Are we in space?" We came down and the friction caused our heat shield to glow. His eyes were wide open as we slowed down. We pressed the space bar to deploy our parachutes but were going too fast and our chutes failed. We crashed and he asked if the kerbal was OK. I said yes as I hit ESC and went back to the VAB and changed a few things. A few minutes later, we landed our capsule safely and he had the biggest smile on his face. I haven't heard a word about Minecraft since! Thank you for making this wonderful game!!!

"See that little grey circle in the night sky, impossibly far away? You can go there."

>Spend the next few hours building and testing rockets, trying to get one into orbit. Laugh at all the explosions, and the ever-increasing body count. Realize you have no idea how orbital mechanics work.

>Research how actual rockets achieve an orbit, maybe watch a Youtube video. Maybe take a step back and spend a few hundred hours just exploring your home planet with a plane or rover.

>Get into orbit. Realize you have no idea how to get to the moon. Research a whole different type of orbital mechanics.

>Get to the moon. Realize parachutes don't work.

>Land on the moon, more-or-less in one piece. Realize there's another moon, a bunch of other planets, asteroids that you can capture and bring into orbit, resources that you can harvest into rocket-fuel on the surface of other planets, AND an amazing modding scene that can infinitely more gameplay.

999/10 - Would plunge helpless green astronauts into the sun again.

To remove any doubts, this is by far THE best space simulator out there.

• Amazing learning experience
  
• Choose where you want to go, with what, when, and how.
  
• HUGE planets to discover, literally, thousands upon thousands of kilometers to walk, drive, or fly your epic creations (or, if your not very creative, preset or other players' ships)
  
• Create awesome rockets, landers,ore collection/ astronaut housing bases on other planets, and spaceplanes, the way you want them
  
• Fun science mode to work your way up, earning "science" in order to get better equipment and rocket parts (I recommend for newish players who know at least basic orbits / how to get to the Mun)
  
• "Creative" mode where all parts are unlocked (great for testing and trying new things)
  
• "Career" mode for those really wanting a challenge (balance economy, science, and reputation for your own space organization, I recommend having a little more experience before jumping right in) The Career mode adds A LOT of purpose to the game, as well as adding new challenges such as having to make landings in certain locations, sending satellites in specific orbits, making space stations at specific altitudes, placing a flag on a certain body, collecting ore from a planet, etc.
  
• They are still adding to this game... Additionally, there are several user created mods that really expand on the experience, adding new parts or game mechanics.
  
• Built off of real physics! One doesn't just lop space junk up into the sky; one must deliver that space junk the realistic and correct way, thus rendering Kepler and Newton proud!!! (generally speaking, it allows one to see how actual launches and orbits work in the real world)
  
• Many other great aspects to this game (however, this would be a long list with all of them)

• Graphics aren't the best, however, they are still good and create a real sense of depth and can deliver a "lost-in-space" kind of a feel... It makes me feel so small compared to the vastness of our world. Plus, the graphical style really fits the style of the overall game.
  
  
• Somewhat steep learning curve- It took me a while to learn to get to the "Mun." After this achievement, it was a lot easier to get to Minmus after this. It was difficult to get to Duna, however, once I got there, I have gradually learned enough to go pretty much anywhere and have made a permanent base on Laythe complete with science lab, crew pod and a brand spanking new air breathing engine jet transport, as well as a souped up Rover for them to drive. I have been to almost all of the planets. So basically, it takes time to get "good" at this game, but I assure you, it's rewarding and so spectacular to see how huge this world is (And this one is scaled down, too!). However, new tutorials should be very helpful for the beginner.
  
  
• not too much music (it's still good, just gets repetitive sometimes) (*ahem* devs please add more music)
  
  
• Getting to further out planets can take a long time, because it is a little more difficult and takes more resourcefulness... (several hours if your like me and really take your time, especially if you send a 3 manned mission to Eeloo... [you'll get faster the more experience you get though])

This is an incredible game, I've almost got 300 hours into it and I'm still looking forward to firing it up nearly every day.
There's a lot of reasons to buy this game:

* if you love space, this game will get you there, first hand, and let you have your hand at designing space crafts (and planes), flying them, and of course, crashing them in big glorious explosions

* you will learn a lot about space, physics, orbital mechanics, aerodynamics, etc... this really happens, I have two friends that are rocket scientists (one does ion drive research, the other designs micro-satellites, I work at a large university), and after playing this game for a few months, I could easily talk to them about their work, where they drop terms like ISP, TWR, retrograde, normals, etc, terms that I now fully understand

* the game is very approachable, you can play in "career mode" which walks you though the beginning steps of putting a rocket into space, to orbiting, to visiting the Mun and beyond. If you need more help, the YouTube scene is quite impressive, with people like Scott Manley producing really professional (and charming) video tutorial series. I am not a lover of simulation-type games, I play mostly FPS's and RPG's, but I found this game quite easy to pick and up get into.

* while approachable, this game is certainly not easy, for example, landing and returning from Eve (the Venus-like planet in the Kerbin system) is one of the hardest tasks in the game, and while most of the game is fairly non-stressful in its nature, landing spaceships is a tense experience, especially when Jeb's life is on the line! For those that find it difficult to master some of the more difficult tasks, there are impressive control mods like MechJeb2 where you essentially point at a spot on a planet and press the "Land There" button, MechJeb does the rest.

* the game has a unique charm to it, in the game you are progressing through the space race for the people of the Kerbin panet, you'll get to know and love the kerbalnauts that will fly your craft, especially Jebediah Kerman, pilot extraordinaire and fearless hero to the Kerbin people

* the community for this game, is active, organized, and quite friendly, mostly found on Reddit and the Squad forums, you can get any question answered, or read mission reports from someone's latest mission, or get news on upcoming updates for the game. The only time you see people getting belligerent on these forums is when some is misbehaving toward others
Squad is actively developing this game, each release (every new months) bringing a lot of new features and parts to build with, and just this week the update to KSP brings many new rocket parts built in collaboration with NASA plus a mission to save Kerbin from killer asteroids!

* the mod scene for this game is extremely impressive, from new real-life inspired rocket parts (so you can build your own Saturn V), to impressive new systems that enable for example planetary mining (so you can get more fuel on route to your target), to just plain fun mods like the nuclear pulse rocket, which explodes varied-sized nuclear bombs behind a large plate to produce thrust (scientists actually design this beast in the 50's)

* the endgame is rich and deep: once you've completed career mode, many KSP players switch to the realism mods, which give you the real solar system, truly deadly reentries, realistic communication constraints (that require building satellite networks), more realistic aerodynamics modeling (e.g., Ferram's amazing FAR mod), real life-support constraints, etc. that make for a significantly more challenging and rewarding experience; if that doesn't trip your trigger, the forums have organized challenges with leaderboards, to see who can, for example, get to the Mun with the least number of parts, or eject the most Kerbals out of the solar system, all great fun with the competitors meticulously documenting their missions

If these things sound interesting to you, get this game! It was the best $25 bucks I ever spent!

1st hour playing: WHAT DO I DO WHY IS IT BLOWING UP
400th hour playing: If my calculations serve me right with this T/W ratio It will take me 1 minute 43 seconds to burn at my periapsis to reach duna insertion at which point I will get into an eliptical equatoral orbit and perform an aerobrake at 16km to get into a steady circular orbit and then I will descend with one of my 4 spaceplanes I took to go to the north pole at which I will set up base at my already existing rover while getting TAC resources to monitor life support and make sure my colony of 212 kerbals can live.

11/10


Edit because for some reason this gained popularity, proper review:

Pros:
Endless fun, so much to do. Bored of building rockets? Build a space plane! Fed up of the mun? Go to Duna! Don't want to leave the atmosphere? Build whatever you want! The list goes on!

Fantastic modding community and fantastic mods. So much more expansion on an already amazing game.

Fantastic community in general, some of the nicest people I've met have came from this game. They are such a helpful bunch and I'm glad I'm with them! They'll most likely love to help you. There's also a bunch of fantastic YouTubers such as Scott Manley and others... (too many to name) :)

YOU CAN LEARN STUFF FROM THIS AND GAIN NEW INTERESTS! Before I played this I had no interest in space or space exploration whatsoever but now I actively follow space news and am quite knowledgable on the subject. I have also learnt a fantastic deal of orbital mechanics just from playing and learning the game.

Cons:

The engine and optimisation. This game uses Unity and it only uses 1 CPU core. This can be a major problem if running a multicore with low clock speed. The 32bit version of the game is a whole lot more stable but limits your RAM meaning that if you have a ton of mods you can run into a lot of crashes but thankfully there are mods out there such as ATM (Active Texture Management) and texture replacer to limit the amount of RAM the game uses. 64bit as of now is still pretty unstable with mods.

The learning curve and tutorials. The learning curve on this game is huge, I'm not complaining much about this one as rocket science isn't exactly easy is it? You can learn from trial and error and it's how I learnt alot but some things you just have to read up about or watch a tutorial on youtube. There isn't really much of a tutorial in game either.

Conclusion: Buy it. It's really fantastic.

As a Physics student I never quite understood entirely Classical Mechanics till I met Jebediah Kerman. He taught me everything, the real thing, he became de facto my true master and I couldn't be more grateful for what he did for me. We became best buddies, he gave me courage to continue with my studies. I can't recall how many long nights have we spent exploring other worlds completely drunk and having existencial talks. Though, I never really understood a damn word of what he said.

I love this guy to death. I would die if something ever happened to him...


RIP Jebediah (for the 42th time)

This certainly was the best 20 Euros ever spent on a game. I love this game, its learning curve and its modability.

Here a few pointers to help you decide:

1. If you love astronomy and space exploration, this game is for you!
You can do everything you have read and fantasized about. Build any rocket, no matter how stupid the concept may look at first and then try it out in the cold hard reality of space.

2. The game has a very steep learning curve and will constantly challenge you.
You will learn a lot about orbital mechanics, why staging is absolutely necessary and how to conserve fuel. If you don't, you probably won't make it into orbit, much less to the Mun or even other planets. Even after more than 600 hours of playing Kerbal Space Program, I'm learning stuff the hard way by losing vehicles and Kerbals.

3. The game developers actively encourage modding and the modding community is breathtakingly awesome.
The modability of this game is the hidden strength of this game. Without it, I wouldn't have played it half the time I actually did and wouldn't have enjoyed it as much at the same time.

The first time you play through the career mode (meaning you unlock all the technologies) you should play it without any mods, just to learn the basics, look how the game behaves, etc., but after that you should really check out the Kerbal Space Program forums mod section (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forums/35-Add-on-Releases-and-Projects-Showcase ), KerbalStuff (http://beta.kerbalstuff.com/ ) and/or the Curse Mod Page (http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal ). There's mods for so many aspects of the game...
Want to play in more realistic solar system where it's harder to even get into orbit? Check.
Want to have more realistic (= punishing) aerodynamics? Check.
Want to have rocket parts for even larger rockets? Check.
Want to have some autopilot capabilities to assist you with repetitive tasks? Check.
Want to mine for fuel and ores on distant celestial bodies? Check.
Want to have a warp drive? Also check.

There's so many more which you should probably explore for yourself. The replayability of this game is great, thanks to all those mods. The community forums are also really great and helpful.
If you play this game, please make sure you don't forget to mod it at some point, really!

You should not play this game,
- if you don't like space sims to be too realistic. Again: You will have to learn at least basic orbital mechanics which means the strongest force around is not your ship's drive, but gravity. And a heartless ♥♥♥♥♥ she is indeed...
- if you don't enjoy learning stuff the hard way by explosions, disintegrations and death. There is no perfect rocket. At some point stuff will blow up and you will have to start a whole mission again.
- if you don't like games that are still in development. There will be new versions released every now and then, so things change from time to time. For example, when the game was upgraded from 0.22 to 0.23, the whole science system got a rework and a lot of my rockets that were built specifically for science grinding became useless. The update was great though, since it got rid of grinding altogether.

I hope you enjoy this game as much as I still do. :)

This game should be standard issue in school physic classes. Taught me more about orbital mechanics than anything else.