Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground DLC Review

One of the issues that often blights sandbox type games is the lack of things to do once you’ve reached endgame. This is a problem that Kerbal Space Program wasn’t exempt from, despite the huge amount of content that has been added since launch. Breaking Ground, the latest DLC for the indie darling is designed to help with that, giving a raison d’être to parts of the game that had prompted numerous “what’s the point of x?” threads on Reddit and the game’s Steam Community. 

Let’s start with one of the simpler satisfactions in Breaking Ground: the new suit. The shape of the classic helmet was too iconic to change, but the suit itself has a sexy new look, with a nice TRON-like glowing seam to boot. Planted your Kerbal on the dark side of the Mün? Well now you can watch the little fella glowing to make it easier to find them. 

The first things to get more love are the rovers. In the past, it just wasn’t really necessary to make them as it was usually easier to just fly where you need to and space walk. With the addition of new surface items and experiments, they become much more useful in this DLC. The surfaces of planets and moons now have items to investigate scattered about. It’s not teeming with life like No Man’s Sky perhaps, but certainly there are some pretty rocks and volcanoes to look at. With the addition of scanner arms for the rovers, you can drive up and check them out, earning those all-important science points in the process. 

It’s not just looking at rocks though, you’ll have a whole bunch more science stuff to do on surfaces now, with a slew of different surface-based experiments. There’s even a new way to observe mystery goo, because you know you want to do more goo experiments. In the mix is a seismic experiment too, which means that my most common thing to do in Kerbal Space Program, crashing, is now kind of useful. You can learn much more from your screw ups as a result, and Jeb won’t be dying completely in vain. 

Speaking of Jeb, he won’t be the Kerbal that you want to send out to perform these experiments of course, you’ll get much more out of doing them with a scientist. This also means that your science team finally have a reason to go on to the surface. Previously they were a bit of an unnecessary weight and would often get left out. With lots of things to investigate, the boffin Kerbals will have something much more exciting to do now. 

The major new addition is robotic parts, and a whole load of new ways to interact. Hinges, servos, moving and mechanical parts and pistons are all represented. Yes, they were already available through mods, but these are just a little bit slicker, more in depth, and of course, they’re official now. The addition means that some of the fan favourites like the trebuchet and non-fixed wings for added stability are now a part of the game world for everyone, and not just those who have added them through mods. Also, you can make a giant robot crab like in Ghost in the Shell, and who doesn’t want to do that?

Alongside these features comes a new programmer, giving you the ability to sequence movements and actions. Essentially it’s like Premiere Pro or GarageBand but with Kerbal robots. This is open to everyone, even those who don’t yet have the expansion, meaning that control can be even more granular.

There aren't any new game modes and Kerbal Space Program doesn’t really do story content or multiplayer so nothing to see there, and on the surface (pun intended) it could be argued that you don’t get great value for fifteen quid, given the relative cost of the base game. That said, if you love Kerbal Space Program and this helps you sink a few more weekends into it, then you’re probably still getting better value then buying more loot boxes for Generic AAA-Shooter number 75.