Kerbal Space Program creator returning to the skies with Balsa Model Flight Simulator
Kerbal stomp
Having slipped the surly bonds of Kerbin, Kerbal Space Program’s former lead developer Felipe Falanghe has been quietly working on a new-but-similar flying craft creator, Balsa Model Flight Simulator. It shares some of Kerbal’s DNA, letting the player build and fly model aircraft, but adds multiplayer and combat to the formula.
BMFS (get used to that, I'm committing to it) looks a lot more swooshy than KSP in the trailer, and it looks a lot more forgiving. That might just be because it's in the hands of the developer, but I imagine controlling a soft, wee, remote control plane is easier than trying to fly to another planet in a bin with wings. As the title suggests, you can control the planes from the ground, but you can also take direct control from the mini-cockpit and in third-person.
That build section looked rather familiar, eh? Snapping bits together, tweaking stats. All very Kerby. Though it's rather cute, there's still a serious, physics-based flight model underpinning it all, so crashes and smashes will still happen. The addition of multiplayer means your planes will have to survive under the crosshairs of other players, should you choose to take them online.
Here's an interesting thing. The game has been out for a while now, but only on the Oculus store. This is something of a reboot to take it out of the VR-only realm and into a wider audience.
It's out summer of 2020, and will be arriving on Steam's Early Access store "in the near future".