Kerbal Space Program 2 was one of the most surprising announcements to be revealed at the 2019 Gamescom. Star Squad is the developer behind the game and it is the highly anticipated sequel to the critically acclaimed Space Simulation Game Kerbal Space Program. The sequel is being developed by a different team from the original and sounds like an ambitious evolution of the 2015 masterpiece Squads.
Kerbal Space Program is an indie game based on rocket building and space exploration that is a 7-year-old game with a cult-like following of programmers, astronaut candidates, engineers, and typical laid-back explosion enthusiasts. Its unique and active community of modders that fix bugs and add new features has kept the game fresh for years. Take-Two and Star Theory Games are now preparing to release a full-length sequel to the Space program titled Kerbal Space Program 2 seven years after the release of the original games and five years after their full release. When the game is published in 2022, it will include new features to make it more inclusive for new players.
Players will have access to a new generation of ships and shuttles, some of which will push the boundaries of space exploration. There will also be an extensive tutorial system that will make learning terms entertaining and textbook-like.
In addition to rockets and space planes, players can also build entire colonies. By flying colony modules to other planets, players are able to create habitats that can feed a small population on Kerbal. From there, it will get bigger, provided it is also able to build rocket colonies.
Star Squad based in Mexico City is the developer of the critically acclaimed space simulator Kerbal Space Program. Star squad is an international team of talented, passionate, and ambitious people who love video games and space science and has reinvented themselves as a full-time video game development company. One of the most prolific Kerbal modders, Chris Anderley-Nertea, is currently a game engineer at the Canadian space firm MDA, developing ground-based systems to retrieve data from spacecraft. In the showcase, ground improvements for Pol One, Moon, and Planet Jool were presented. In the paper, the team led by lead author Craig Williams designed a spherical tokamak fusion engine.
According to an extensive Bloomberg report investigating KSP2’s unexpected move earlier to a new in-house development studio, Star Theory developers received an unsolicited LinkedIn message from the publisher last December in which Take-Two producers revealed that they had set up a new studio to continue working on the KSp2 project. Take-Twos Private Division had canceled the project, but Star Theory poached employees from LinkedIn and continued to work on it internally at Intercept Games. It was the Star Theory game developers who replaced the squad design from the very first game. The immense success and goodwill of the space simulation game Kerbal Space Program 2015 led to the acquisition of the game in mid-2017, licensed to Industry giant Take-Two Interactive.
The game was originally scheduled for release in early 2020 but has been postponed three times since. In November 2020, creative director Nate Simpson announced that the date had been moved back to 2022. A year later, the launch of the space games was postponed until the autumn of 2021, and the launch window for the following year was postponed.