FTL: Faster Than Light1544 views

by KaboewmJanuary 17th, 2013

FTL: Faster Than Light is an astonishing roguelike strategy game, that really makes you feel like a commander of a spaceship.

In FTL you play as the captain of a spaceship. Your job is to bring vital information to the Federation Fleet, located several space sectors away. Of course this isn't an ordinary walk in the park. Along the way you encounter tons of hostile spaceships existing of rebels, pirates and other alien vessels. On top of all that you are being chased by the Rebel fleet. They will try their very best to stop you from reaching the Federation fleet. And so you embark on an adventure across the galaxy, in an attempt to save the Federation.

You are in control of your starship. You decide how you distribute your power across the systems of your ship. When battling ships or helping people in need you will receive scrap, the standard currency in the galaxy. You also have a chance to get fuel, missiles, drone parts, weapons, drone schematics, augmentations or even crew members. With scrap you can upgrade systems on your ship or spend it at a store if you happen to meet one. When traveling in space, you 'jump' from beacon to beacon and when reaching the end beacon you can jump to the next sector. Each jump consumes one fuel, so you need to keep track of your fuel supply. If you run out of fuel, you are left stranded in space and hopefully you find someone who is willing to trade some with you before the Rebel fleet finds you. Missiles are used for certain weapons, some missile based weapons ignore shields and do direct damage to a spaceship's hull, making them a very powerful weapon. Drones need drone parts and power to be active and their task can differ from keeping enemies out of your ship, attacking the enemy ship or defending yours or other convenient uses. Every ship can also hold three augmentations. These augmentations can be acquired by buying them from stores or receiving them from battles or events. Each augmentations gives a bonus to a certain factor, like getting an extra percent of scrap during events. Then you have crew members. You need a crew to fly your ship. When systems take damage, they are the ones who can repair your systems. Some systems can have crew members controlling it, giving the system a small bonus. You can also teleport some of your crew on the enemy ship and try to take out the enemy crew or sabotage some parts of their ship. This isn't without any danger of course, your crewmembers can die and having less crewmembers is a serious disadvantage.



When battling a hostile ship, you can select where your weapons need to fire. Each weapon requires power and has a cooldown between each shot. Damaging enemy systems prevents them from using it. If you damage the enemy weapons system they will no longer be able to fire at you. Shields protect you from incoming shots, so when your shields are down, you are pretty screwed. Missiles however, ignore shields and are therefore very lethal. They are limited on the other hand, while other weapons aren't.

Before starting you can choose with what spaceship you will begin. There are allot of starships you can unlock and each ship has 2 layouts. The second layout can be unlocked by completing two of the three ship specific achievements. The starting options for each ship are picked for you and are always the same for each ship and layout. Unlocking these ships and layouts is probably one of the biggest goals you can set, while playing the game.



It's up to you how you upgrade your ship. Will you upgrade your weapons, or will you upgrade your shields? Will you focus on drones or on crew? All these factor make FTL such an interesting game. You don't have a long campaign, but rather short play sessions. You play until your ship is destroyed, or until you've beaten the game. At the end of each session you receive a score. Trying to get the highest scores is really something to strive for, unfortunately there are no online leaderboards. You only have yourself to compete with. Sometimes you can get really unlucky, which results in a fast destruction of your ship. This can get frustrating at times, especially since very small mistakes or decisions can impact your entire session.

Overall thoughts: FTL: Faster Than Light brings forth an amazing spaceship simulation, that also requires quite allot of strategic skill. Having to deal with defeat can get frustrating and allot of the events get repetitive after a while. Nonetheless the game makes you feel like a commander of a spaceship and is overall fun to play.	TiG Score by Kaboewm
Pros: + Randomized levels + Challenging + 'Space commander feel' Cons: - Frustrating at times - Local highscores only - Events get repetitive	8.0/10

Developers: Subset Games
Publishers: Subset Games
Platforms:
• Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux
Release date: September 14, 2012
Genre: Strategy, Indie, Simulation

FTL: Faster Than Light's website
FTL: Faster Than Light on Steam