When The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom first came out, one of the earliest and best jokes that circulated the community was a very specific flavor of Ultrahand building nonsense: the Korok Space Program.
Essentially, players were having fun building increasingly complex and silly vehicles to launch Koroks into the sky, or across long distances, and humorously dubbed their efforts in a clever play on space flight sim game Kerbal Space Program. The two games seem to have few simularities, but the slapstick way Tears of the Kingdom players’ rockets launched, caught on fire, crashed, and generally caused mayhem was at least somewhat reminiscent of chaotic scenarios in Kerbal.
Most people probably would have let this comparison end there. I did not. I thought it was hilarious. So I reached out to the developers of Kerbal Space Program 2, and asked them to help me build my own Korok Space Program.
They said yes.
You can watch developers Brandon Ordon and Tom Vinita help me build multiple vehicles in Tears of the Kingdom below. First, we launched “Billy the Korok” to a sky island above Tarry Town. From there, we tried to help him reach his friend on the ground a distance away…but may have had to modify our mission profile a bit during the process.
Following our chat, I also briefly caught up with Ordon to see what he was building on his own in Tears of the Kingdom, and his own builds seem surprisingly grounded for someone with superior rocket-making capabilities. Well, okay, maybe except for the one that’s on fire. Here’s what he sent:
What I learned from building the Korok Space Program with Ordon and Vinita is that Tears of the Kingdom is, actually, not as dissimilar to Kerbal Space Program as it may seem. You’re still playing around with the rocket equation just to get off the ground, building a balanced structure still matters, and sometimes you have to fly entirely by instruments. Oh, and most importantly: any landing you can walk away from is a successful one.
There’s a lot to build and a lot to do in Tears of the Kingdom. For help with all of it, take a look at our Tears of the Kingdom Walkthrough and Guide about making your way through Hyrule. In fact, you can start here:
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
