One of the biggest draws to Stonehearth to me is that it’s a sandbox game. I love real sandbox games, where you have no specific goals, and you can do whatever you want to do within the game world. There are many games that try to do this, but few that do it well. Stonehearth seems to be one of those that is going to do well, very well.
Well I recently discovered a game that’s been out for a while that does it well, very well. When I say it’s been out for a while it’s been on Steam early access for a while. It’s not even done and it does it very well. It’s been mentioned a few times before in other threads but never discussed. For those of you who haven’t tried it, there is a free demo of it on Steam as well. I played the demo for about 10 min before I realized I had to have this game, and put down paid the $20 before I even fully explored the demo.
It’s funny because I was aware of this game for a long time. For some reason the Steam page for this game was not enough to entice me to play. I didn’t decide to try it out until I noticed on of my Steam friends was playing the demo. I didn’t know there was a demo before. So I checked it out.
OK, what is the game?
Kerbal Space Program
Wow, I am really enjoying it. It’s amazingly sandbox. You have no goals, you can do whatever you like. There are so many avenues that you can explore that it would be hard to explore them all, and they haven’t even finished it yet. There are also a pile of mods for the game out (again it’s not even finished). One of the things that is so amazing about it, is the game is very educational, and still whopping piles of fun. Some might have a bit of trouble getting into it at first. There is a bit of a learning curve, but there is a Wiki, and a pile of YouTube material out there to help you.
Behind the comical exterior of the game, is an extremely detailed Newtonian physics engine. The simulation is amazing. The other thing is that the interface makes “rocket science” accessible and easy. The maneuvers you perform are completely realistic. There is an entire solar system for you to explore as well as two moons around your starting planet, which is surprisingly very similar to Earth, including size, distance from the sun, and rotational speed. The comic surface of the game very much adds to the flavor. When you crash one of your rockets into the moon, or they fail it seems plausible because it was done by these funny Kerbal guys, not serious human scientists. It’s brilliant.
If one of the reasons you are here in the Stonehearth community is because you love sandbox games, and you are even casually interested in space, and space exploration, then you really need to check this game out. I’m sure many of you have. I could say more but I don’t want my typical wall of text to get too high so that no one even tries to look over it.