Cutesy space disaster sim, Kerbal Space Progam, coming to Xbox One

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In my experience, Kerbal Space Program is a game in which a race of huggable space people who look like the zombified children of Beaker from the Muppets die in horribly preventable explosions. It's consistently harrowing, a bleak look at the perils of scientific experimentation and the negative effects of cost-cutting. Xbox One users will soon be able to experience all of this when the game comes to the console - there's no release date as yet, but a teaser trailer confirms it's incoming.

Apparently, the game is also an incredibly rigorous physics-based crafting game in which you construct rockets that need to be able to pierce the atmosphere without falling apart, reach another planet, then land your Kerbals on said planet, who then need to carve out some kind of existence. It matches in-depth simulation with old-school strategy, and it's magnificent. Or so say people who can actually play the thing.

Kerbal's possibly even more amazing for its development history. Developer, Squad, is a Mexican marketing agency who made the game as a sort of side-project - a side project that's now done so well that the likes of NASA and future-genius, Elon Musk have expressed their admiration. To put that in perspective, I occasionally try and improve on a good chilli recipe in my spare time, and Elon Musk hasn't said squat about it.

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Joe Skrebels
Joe Skrebels
Joe first fell in love with games when a copy of The Lion King on SNES became his stepfather in 1994. When the cartridge left his mother in 2001, he turned to his priest - a limited edition crystal Xbox - for guidance. And now he's here.