Thankfully, for those that don’t have near unlimited amounts of time to spend messing about, there’s a wealth of hints, tips and walkthroughs already available on the internet, so don’t worry too much about feeling lost (in space).

If you’re going to conquer the skies, you’ve got a big, complicated (but fun!) job ahead of you. One of Kerbal Space Program‘s biggest achievements is that it gives you the impression of its sheer, scary scale. Planets that would take months of real time to travel to (thankfully, you can accelerate game’s time by up to a factor of 100,000). And after that? Well, there are several other planets in the solar system to visit. Taking it a step further and putting a Kerbal on the Moon (or the “Mun” as it’s called here) and getting him or her safely back to Kerbin afterwards is a feat that makes you feel as clever and smug as an actual rocket engineer must. Building a stable rocket with enough thrust to escape Kerbin’s atmosphere completely and remain in a stable orbit? Bloody hard work. Building a rocket from your meagre selection of initial components is easy – there’s not much choice in what you can construct – but flying it safely into the upper atmosphere and landing it without blowing up the poor Kerbal astronaut inside is a little tougher. Science mode is, for my money, the most interesting, as it doesn’t feel unfair or overly daunting but gives you a rewarding feeling of progression as you tick off the milestones.

Kerbal space program review