“We had all these open decisions still to make, and it could have held us back much more if we’d been hard set on an unchangeable, ultimate vision for the project.” You need to set goals to aim for and honor them, otherwise there will always be something else you can tweak to make it better.” Falanghe also points to the fact that the team managed its expectations for the game early on. “That’s something you need to embrace if you plan to release early, especially if you’re independent with loose or looser deadlines. He recalls that the first version of the game Squad published, “wasn’t nearly as good-looking-or even much good.” This was an essential part of the lesson, though: “I learned to accept that the game is an evolving thing, rather than an unfinished version of a final idea,” he says. I think working like this, as long as you keep up the pace and the enthusiasm, quality emerges naturally.” We go back, we tweak what we’re not happy with, and it ends up working or looking better than last time. If I’ve learned anything about this, it’s that quality is something the project picks up over time. “It’s also not a matter of being a perfectionist.

“I think the quality of the game isn’t something that’s necessarily related to the size of the team or the amount of resources,” he says. Suffice to say, it’s a long way from firing off explosives in the back yard.įalanghe is aware that the project is an ambitious one, but isn’t perturbed. Now, Falanghe leads a team that has employed some 25 people all told, and is knee-deep in development on a game that allows players to create and manage their own space program, by building and flying spacecraft, and trying to help the beloved Kerbals fulfill their ultimate mission of conquering space. But the concept stuck with Falanghe as he made his way through college studying game design, and grew over time into a pet project. “It wasn’t meant to be a video game back then-it was just something we did because we were bored and reckless,” he says, adding, “don’t try this at home.” “We’d take actual firework rockets and such, dismantle them, and put together these ‘spacecraft’ we strapped fins and struts to them, tried to pull off two-stage designs, and all the while we taped these little men made of tin foil to their duct-tape cockpits.” These intrepid little guys were called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Kerbals. “The original concept for KSP came from this game I used to play as a teenager with my friends,” says lead developer and Squad founder Felipe Falanghe. The roots of Kerbal Space Program grew from a rather dangerous place.

Kerbal space program full screen