Disaster unfolds rapidly at NASA's fictional moon base in 2025. A meteorite strike has damaged vital solar arrays that keep the life support systems running, oxygen levels are dropping fast for astronauts inside the base, and that darn repair robot just got stuck. What's a space explorer to do?
Welcome to "Moonbase Alpha," NASA's new free game now available for download for PC users on Valve's Steam online gaming service. Virtual explorers must try to restore oxygen by repairing damaged solar arrays, power couplings and life support systems during a 25-minute limit. And that’s just the single-player game.
The game also allows up to six players to cooperatively race the clock online, and to tackle larger repair maps for a greater challenge. Players can hop aboard a lunar rover to cross the longer distances, a feature that would’ve been nice in single-player mode. But that might just be me.
"Moonbase Alpha" gives a taste of NASA's ambitious space game, a massively multiplayer online game, called "Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond," where players would take on astronaut roles, such as a roboticist, and explore virtual versions of the moon and other extraterrestrial locations. As such, this is really more of a really fancy, interactive teaser trailer for when the Astronaut MMO game is released. Still, it’s free, and the game engine and graphics look awesome.
My inner NASA geek is all about this game. How about yours?