| Mail |

You might also like: WoW Insider, Massively, and more

More Sites You Might Like

NASA's free Moonbase Alpha now available

by Mike Schramm on Jul 8th 2010 10:00AM

If the Army can release a free video game to drum up some attention for its cause, why not NASA? That seems to be the argument behind Moonbase Alpha, a free game developed along with NASA that's now available on Steam. With up to six players at a time, the game allows you to experience the surface of the moon while trying to "repair and replace equipment in order to restore the oxygen production to the settlement," after a meteorite causes system failure.

The official page calls it a "First Person Explorer" title, and shows players fixing equipment connections and even building and controlling a Wall-E style repair robot. The graphics even look good, too -- exactly like that television studio NASA filmed those "moon landings" in. Nice try, NASA, but everybody knows it's nothing but green cheese up there.

Source: MoonbaseAlphaGame.com, Steam

Tags: army-game-studios, first-person-explorer, free, freeware, moon, moonbase-alpha, nasa, pc, steam, virtual-heroes

Reader Comments (26)

Why does steam say it's been out since 1999?

@Alphonze

It's all a conspiracy

@Alphonze

Steam has some funky dates sometimes. Sometimes it lists when a game has been released on Steam. Sometimes it lists when the game originally came out, sometimes it lists something completely random.

It lists Day of Defeat: Source as coming out in 2005. It came out two years ago.

@Drakkenfyre Uh, no, DoD:Source came out in 2005.

@TraceurRyuk Prepping for LBP2

well, look at that shadows in the picture above.... i'd say someone is jumping on the wrong side of the moon

Well, the first person part isn't correct, it's all in third person(at least normal play, haven't driven a robot yet)

Besides that, it's a neat little time waster. It gets repetitive after a while though, since there's only one mission. But still pretty fun for a while. But grab some people you know to play with. The first wave of players have gotten bored, and the griefing has already begun.

@Capgun

Well, it is free after all...

@Capgun

Scroll Wheel

You can alternate first or third person as Astronaut or Robot.

Hopefully some maps (or dare I say, a map editor) will be added as the one map gets old fast.

They need a better graphics engine...

I saw it yesterday but the way they described it, it seems like you HAVE to play it multiplayer only. Since it's a free game, that can only mean 1 thing. People worse than xbox chocolate milkshake kids will swarm to it.

@Sidebuster You don't have to play multiplayer. When you start it up, you can choose a '1 or 2 player' mission, and then play offline. There options for more players as well.

It feels like they tried to make it both realistic and arcadey yet succeeded at neither.

For example; you move quite slowly but it isn't slow enough to be realistic and it isn't fast enough to be fun. It's just annoying.

The rest of what I've played adheres to that same philosophy of trying to ground itself in some type of realism while maintaining a bit of arcadey accessibility all the while not really nailing either.

I'd probably give it more of a chance were it not made by the America's Army people and were it not a propaganda tool first, a recruiting tool second, and a game last.

@FOI
>Propaganda tool.
Yeah, they forced me to play it too.

@FOI
There's a difference between NASA propaganda and Army propaganda.

@(Unverified)
I lol in your general direction. You're insulting scientists through your ignorant words; look at the technology we have- JUST LOOK at it. FFS, we easily got to the moon. I can't believe people like you still exist. It's just pathetic.

I played it a few days ago, when it was first released...there's not much to it, I'm guessing they've only been developing it for a few months. About the most fun you can have is sabotaging the air unit before the other players can repair it, but there's no way to sabotage the main unit so your griefing is only temporary :(

(however, its just great to run into the hills with a length of pipe and just see what the people do without it there.)

The game seems to be well done, for what there is. It's supposed to be a recreation of an accident on the moon and it's your job to fix it. You move like an Astronaut, etc etc.

Also, I think it's worth noting that this is just kind of a demo for their upcoming MMO. I assume the MMO will have many more things like this to deal with, and many people to help with it.

I haven't played it with others yet (just solo'd it once to see) but I think they did a pretty good job so far.

I feel slightly ashamed of the grin that grew on my face when I read this headline...

This:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTCz3c2b2Gc

Made me laugh a bit :P

@Fminus Negativity To The Rescue

not worthy of a response.

@Alphonze: Could it just be a reference to the British sci-fi TV series "Space: 1999" (IIRC, the moon base in the show was called Moonbase Alpha)?

@Special Agent Steve

To the contrary, ignorant people who believe everything the government tells them are pathetic. Not i

Can we uncover the black monolith if we dig in the right crater?

You had me at Free Moonbase.

@(Unverified)

Oh sure. And they are also lying about the earth being round and about the earth revolving around the sun, right?

Go away, imbecile.

@(Unverified) You realize that they can shoot a laser up to the moon, and it will bounce back because of what Apollo put up there. Mythbusters did it too.

Breaking News

Moonbase Alpha

NASA's free Moonbase Alpha now available

Reader Comments (26)

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:10AM Alphonze said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:16AM TraceurRyuk Prepping for LBP2 said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:15AM Drakkenfyre said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:18AM ijyt said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 1:28PM pedasn said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:12AM Capgun said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:17AM TraceurRyuk Prepping for LBP2 said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:58AM Daverator said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:23AM FernandoRocker said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:27AM Sidebuster said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:20AM WC said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 10:41AM FOI said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:14AM Special Agent Steve said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 12:06PM rowd149 said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:13AM Special Agent Steve said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:18AM Swizzler said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:22AM WC said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:23AM TheRepublic said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:36AM t3hguitarman said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:58AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:59AM ly000001 said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 11:59AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 12:03PM rajendra82 said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 12:16PM EvoHelix said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 12:27PM FredFredrickson said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 3:18PM Grubasaurus Rex said

Moonbase Alpha Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW