[Review] FTL

[Lekon]

Title: FTL
Platform: PC
Developer: Subset Games
MSRP: $8.99 on GoG, Steam, or direct from Subset Games
Editor: James "Lekon" Barry

What's Hot: An easy to learn, yet deeply challenging take on ship to ship combat and space exploration. Tons of random events and branching possibilities.

What's Not: As with almost any Roguelike, a lucky find early in the game often makes all the difference and one bad luck encounter can end your trip in a cry of frustration.

Lately, many games are taking on the term "Roguelike" and running in thousands of directions with the basic tenets. Permadeath, random loot, skill or item progression, random areas are all staples of roguelikes, and are all visible here in FTL, a new real time "roguelike-like" from Subset Games.

Come join the CoGs in spaaaaaace!

Story wise, FTL finds your intrepid (or inept, depending) crew as one of the last ships of the Federation. Currently a war is going on, and the Federation is losing, badly. The Rebellion has almost won, but luckily your ship has vital information that can turn the tide of the war. Unluckily, the rebels know this and are now after you.

At the start of the game, you'll pick from a list of ships and variant models. On your first play through, only the Kestrel, a fairly weak (but still serviceable) ship manned only by humans is available. In playing through the game, as certain conditions are reached, other ships will be unlocked. Moreover, each ship has three unique achievements. Unlock two of the three, and that ship's variant version is unlocked. Variants aren't always more powerful, but usually do mix up the abilities of the ship quite a bit. While the mainline Kestrel is only a simple blaster and missile ship, the variant Red-Tail brings four separate lasers to bear. Better in many situations... unless you run into someone with heavy shields.

Once in the game, you'll be presented with a large map screen of your current sector, with your goal being to get to the exit star, and warp out to one of the next sectors. Each FTL jump takes a certain amount of time though, time that lets the pursuing fleet catch up to you. If you're in a rebel controlled zone, you'll be attacked by a powerful ship, and even if you win, you'll gain no loot from the battle. Thus a lot of the map game becomes a balancing act of seeing how many stars you can hit up (Especially since each one costs fuel to go to) versus how far ahead you need to stay from the approaching fleet. Luckily each new sector resets the fleet's advance, and certain random events allow you to slow down your enemies to buy you some valuable exploration time.

The rebel fleet is always on your tail

At each stop on your galactic jaunt, you'll find any number of random encounters. Combat is frequent, but not constant. Chances are you'll run into a fight, an empty area, an area with some free loot, or an area with a set of choices. Much like the old Choose your own Adventure books, you'll be given a scenario, and asked what to do. Adding to this though is the addition of special blue options. If you have the right crew or equipment for a situation, you'll be given blue choices, which always have positive outcomes. Fire breaking out in a space station? Send one of your fire-proof Rock crew members in, to clear out the damage without any chance of death. Space station on the brink and shooting everyone around? Disable it with ion cannons to avoid destroying the valuable loot. I've been surprised many times by just how odd some of the blue options can be, and how many special abilities or options come up from having a varied crew and load out.

Several of these choices also lead to special side quests. Investigating stations, chasing down federation loyalists to get extra repairs, finding hidden zones, and most useful: ship unlocks. Almost all of the ships to be unlocked require a bit of questing, finding the right place, with one of the right types of crew or equipment on board. Sometimes these choices can have you going to two or three separate stars, or even other sectors to finish them.

And sometimes the choices are bribe vs vengeance.

The majority of your time in FTL will be in the combat screen. Your ship takes up the majority of the screen, showing the various rooms, systems, power levels, weapons and abilities available. A smaller window shows the enemy ship off in the distance, along with a bit of info on its various systems. Combat progresses in real time, with weapons and offense/defense systems charging up, with you being able to fire them off once they're fully charged. The game can be paused at any time, and it's often a good idea to do such, as it can be hard to click a small crew member in the middle of several fires and breach holes. You're always able to change power levels, send crew to different sectors of the ship (where they will automatically man the stations if possible, or try to repair damage/fight fires if any are present.) Ship door control is also manual, allowing you to expose certain rooms to space, often handy if you need to suffocate a fire... or an enemy boarding party.

During the engagements you're able to target any room on the enemy's ship, with separate damage levels for each system. Hit the shield room hard enough, suddenly he's much easier to kill. Ion blast the weapons, and you're no longer getting shot. Take out drone control, and the enemy has no way to stop your high damage missiles. The entire combat phase has hundreds of variables and counter moves. Missiles penetrate shields, beams hit several rooms at once but don't damage shields at all, teleporters let you beam crew over to take down the systems hand to hand, and bombs can be beamed over for another nasty surprise. At the same time, enemies have access to all of these abilities, depending on the race of the ship you're fighting. Mantis ships are notorious for beaming over commandos to try and kill you, while slugs prefer biological weapons over actual ship damage.

All of this is occuring in real time, meaning you'll be shuffling crew to fight fires, fix breaches, while changing power levels to keep your shields or engines at maximum ability, or moving juice away from the teleporters to the weapons systems to get all your weapons back online. Each bit of damage to a system lowers the maximum amount of energy you can place in that system, and actual damage that gets through shields also ticks off parts of your hull. When the hull hits zero, it's game over.

To quote another game: "Congratulations, you have died!"

As you gain currency (Scrap) you'll be able to improve your ship's different systems, basically allowing you to put more power into each system, thus giving more bonuses, be it more weapons able to be powered at once, higher dodge rates, or larger shield banks. This same currency also is used in the various shops around the universe, sometimes selling permanent passive boosts, or extra crew, or even unique weapons to help get you through the fights. Again, the game has you doing a balancing act between buying new gear, or upgrading the systems you have, or potentially needing the scrap for random encounters to use for bribes or repairs on friendly ships.

FTL is a remarkable game. There's always a feeling of progression, as you learn more about what items will help you win, and what strategies will get you past certain zones. The unlock system is tough at times, as a few of the unlockable ships require quite a bit of commitment and luck to get. The payoff however comes in ships that play radically different from each other. One ship has a large crew and tele-porters from the start, while another has no airlocks at all, making it much harder to put out fires or fight off boarders. The game fits very well into short bursts of play, as even with perfect play, and a win against the final (and rather nasty boss) Your games will likely never be longer than one or two hours.

The enemy will never stop, never tire.

In closing, FTL is a game well worth your time. You'll be spending tons of time geeking out on all the things you can do with the various ships, finding out new ways to set them up, great builds to try out, as well as figuring out when it's best to upgrade shields or doors. Every time you find a shop, you'll be wondering just what goodies there will be, maybe a weapon you've never seen before, or maybe, just maybe you'll find that Pre-Igniter you've been dreaming of. The game always gives you an amazing sense of "something awesome is just around the corner, or just past the next nebula." When I returned from PAX, I was given a copy of FTL for being a backer of their original kickstarter. I thought "Hey, I'll give this a shot." That thought was at 4pm. Around 2am, my bleary eyes looked over, and I realized just how deep this game's hooks had sunk in. As I finish writing this review, dear readers, I'm firing the game up again to try and take down those bloody slugs. I will defeat them and take their ship. Mark my words.

James Says, "This game is a real gem. Both for long term marathons, and short term play bursts, it is one of the few games where losing is actually fun, and the stories from those losses are the stuff of legends."

Score: 4.5 out of 5 CoGs


Also, as a special bonus... We have two codes for FTL from Good Old Games! To win, just tell us your favorite space ship form any series. Winners will be chosen randomly tomorrow morning and the codes will be sent via PM. You must have been a member of CoG before today to be eligible though!

[J Arcane]

This is one of the best games I have ever played.

Until the last boss.

That fuckin' thing is redonkulous.

And I don't use that word lightly.

Still, even the inevitable annihilation at the end is not enough to drown out the awesome that is the rest of the game. It's an amazing piece of work, and literally the only KS project I've ever funded.

[Typhus]

Well... I'm sold. As soon as it's up on Steam I'll buy it.

[Lekon]

Originally Posted by Typhus

Well... I'm sold. As soon as it's up on Steam I'll buy it.

Might not need to sir. Contest ahoy!

[Abunai]

Sounds like a cool game.

Favorite ship? Guess I'll go Millennium Falcon.

[agentgray]

This. Lekon, you nailed it. I have played a LOT of PC games this year. (And wow about Big Picture Mode—it was made for me.) Anyway, this is my PC GOTY.

This may be corny, but there are times I play that I think some of my crew have personalities. However, humans are just about worthless.

Also, this game SCREAMS—SCREAMS to be on an iPad, but please wait on this, devs. I want to keep my marriage, family, job, etc.

EDIT: Also, don't put me in the contest. I don't need a copy for sure. Spread the wealth.

[Ink Asylum]

I didn't expect to sink 20 hours into this game in the first week, but I did so and enjoyed every minute. It takes an epic space campaign and boils it down into a 1-2 hour experience with tons of replayability.

I need to play through this game on Easy to unlock some of those ships and achievements. Normal is just too challenging to attempt some of the more crazy ones.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by J Arcane

This is one of the best games I have ever played.

Until the last boss.

That fuckin' thing is redonkulous.

And I don't use that word lightly.

I thought the same thing the first couple times I fought the boss. Once you know what to expect, though, you can better prepare during your journey. Now I only lose because of bad luck. If I can properly outfit my ship the final fight is a breeze. I beat him once after losing less than 10 hull.

[Typhus]

Originally Posted by Lekon

Might not need to sir. Contest ahoy!

So I see... that's a tough question. I mean, I know I should answer the Normandy from Mass Effect, since that thing is goddamn cool. But you know, I never really found the anything smaller than a Battle Cruiser cool. So I'm going to have to go with the Dauntless from The Lost Fleet. Who doesn't love a badass flagship?

[Worldcrafter]

I have a fondness for rogue-likes and space, so color me interested. It's heartening to see Kickstarter entries coming out of production as solid products.

There are so many excellent ship designs, but I've always loved the look of the Imperial Shuttle.

[AFeastForCrows]

Excellent review.

I've always been a huge fan of the basic Tie Fighter, actually. For some reason I love they don't have shields, so it seems like the pilots need to be exceptionally skilled to be successfull. I know, because I piloted one, and it's hard!

[inmostlight]

The Heart of Gold from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the best spaceship ever.

[crazyD]

In before Serenity.

[danhoo]

This sounds awesome.

My fav ship is the Sulaco from Aliens because Syd Mead designed it to look like a giant gun.

[Superman's Dead]

How did I not back this? Of all the space games I backed I didn't back this?!! Gulldarn it.

And, of course, the X-Wing is my answer.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by Superman's Dead

How did I not back this? Of all the space games I backed I didn't back this?!! Gulldarn it.

And, of course, the X-Wing is my answer.

You can buy it for a dollar cheaper than the backers paid.

[PathMaster]

Awesome review of a game that looks very cool.

My favorite ship, might just be the Protoss Carrier, or maybe a Vorlon Transport.

[Shadowmage952]

I love a good rogue like and I'm intrigued by the space angle. This game definitely looks good and I'll be checking it out whether or not I win a free code.

Favorite ship? I'll go Ariloulaleelay Skiff from Star Control 2.

[Lint of Death]

Favorite ship? I don't even know. The Heart of Gold and the Lambda are two that I liked a heck of a lot, but I'll go with the Droid Starfighters from the Star Wars prequels because of their goofy personalities and their charmingly awkward ability to walk with their wings.

[Bone]

Good god. Parts of this remind me of SunDog. For the Apple ][e. I have been comparing games to it since 1985...

Wait. FTL Games was the publisher of SunDog. Tell me this isn't an awesome coincidence, or that this isn't the spiritual successor of SunDog!!!