Landing site selected: Space Program Manager touches down October 31st

This October, we will come in peace for all mankind.

Coinciding with the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landings over the weekend, Slitherine have announced a final release date for the long-in-development Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager: October 31st, 2014. This gives you plenty of time to get a good-fitting waistcoat for your Gene Kranz Halloween costume.

Space Program Manager puts you in the driver’s seat of the American or Soviet spaceflight program in the 1950s, and challenges you to beat the other side to a manned Moon landing. Publishers Slitherine and developers Polar Motion are planning expansion packs that will extend the game into the 1980s and into near-future manned explorations of Mars. I gave SPM a thorough going-over in my preview in May, and I expect that the finished product will be pretty popular around here.

SPM will be released on iPad, Android tablets, and desktops. If you want to get in on the desktop version early, Slitherine are selling early access to the development builds until August.

Slitherine have sent along a trailer that marks the lunar landing anniversary. Now, this trailer doesn’t have any gameplay per se, but it does have Jack Kennedy saying “We choose to go to the Moon,” which gives me goosebumps the size of Skittles every time I hear it. Watch it after the break.

UPDATE: Hawk-eyed PT reader Matthew Tate sends us a correction, that I have since verified with Slitherine. That 31 October release date is for the PC version of Space Program Manager — the tablet versions will follow but there’s no nailed down date for those.