LOS ANGELES -- Little by little, we're getting more of an idea what Interstellar is all about.
From that first ambiguous teaser to the extensive Comic-Con footage, Christopher Nolan has dribbled out bits of his space-exploration epic. But what Paramount Pictures is unleashing Thursday is something different altogether -- something cosmic.
You are about to enter The Interstellar Experience, an app-based journey (also available on your browser) through strange solar systems, black holes, wormholes and other outermost reaches of the universe. Obeying realistic physics conceptualized by theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who was also an adviser on the movie, the game is the closest thing we'll get to an explanation of the film's space-time mechanics between now and its Nov. 7 release.
Players pilot the Endurance, the same spacecraft that Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway do in Interstellar, using gravity to slingshot around a solar system's sun and planets to conserve fuel; upgrade the ship when possible; navigate massive black holes to skip through space and time; and earn mission patches along the way.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/screenshot_MySolarSystem_1920x1080.png" caption="A screenshot from "The Interstellar Experience."" credit="Paramount Pictures" alt="screenshot_MySolarSystem_1920x1080"]
Just like the real one, this universe is theoretically infinite. Players can also create solar systems, manipulating the makeup of stars, planets, moons, asteroids and other features, making The Interstellar Experience a potentially massive multiplayer game with no boundaries.
The app is available to play in-browser or for download as a free app on the Google Play store, starting now. It will arrive on iOS next week for free.
Go forth, physics fans. There's a lot of space out there.