Archive 3. July 2016

Leaving Earth is a game in which players manage a space agency and must carry out missions. The solo version presents some exciting challenges, as you need to win at least half of the mission points available. This is already quite difficult - in my first game, to even have a chance of winning solo, I first had to examine Venus to find out that you can't land there (which allowed me to discard the Venus missions and thus reduce the point load) and then carry out a manned Mars mission. The latter failed due to lack of time and propulsion equipment. But ideas are already circulating on how to make the whole thing run better next time. And that's a good sign for a hard optimization game - here you don't shoot or send old men with atomic bombs to asteroids, here you plan your budget, your multi-year missions, and the risk you want to take. Cool. For Science!

Here are some interesting reads from this week that I didn't want to link to separately, collected here without comment.