To Boldly Flee! Faster Than Light

Aaaaaahhh! There’s fire everywhere! Missiles are flying and engineering is tied up dealing with intruders; at least the shields are holding. The pilot is glaring at the console, counting down the seconds before the FTL drive can be engaged. This was poor choice of sector to jump to. The Rebel fleet had caught up with the brave crew of HMS Waffle. But there’s only one way out of the system, so flying through the jaws of the enemy was a necessary risk. At the last second, the engines are fired up flinging the ship into the next zone where new threats lurk.

Of course there’s danger everywhere in FTL. The Rebel fleet is always on your tail, chasing you through every sector. The intelligence your scout ship has collected is vital to the Federation cause. Your only chance of success is to beat the random pirates and aliens on the way to the Federation Fleet. Collecting salvage from the scraps of your enemies gives you currency to trade at friendly merchants. Buying upgrades is not only vital to your final goal, but is necessary to survive the journey.

 There’s plenty of choice available in ship systems, however the random nature of the game means you might not always find what you want. Weapon systems are divided into standard lasers and missiles, to exotic ion guns and beam weapons. Each has different power requirements and is affected by enemy shields in a different way. Arming yourself to the teeth with guns is not a wise strategy however as powering it all is expensive.

And there are plenty of other systems you’ll be relying on to keep your ship in one piece. Salvage can be spent on increasing the reactors power output. This allows you to boost shields and run auxiliary systems such as teleporters and cloaking devices. Sending an away team to board the enemy ship has become a favourite tactic of mine. Killing the enemy crew gives a nice bonus to the precious salvage you recover. That being said, I did lose a few brave souls to friendly fire accidents. Remembering to hold fire and teleport your party back is a good idea.

So how do all these weapons and system work in combat? Manning systems gains a little extra performance. Having an engineer working the engines and pilot in the cockpit gives you a chance to dodge attacks entirely. It also charges your FTL jump allowing you to make your escape if necessary. Shields can hold off light laser fire, but missiles, boarding parties and teleporting bombs can bypass them entirely to deal nasty interior damage. If a system is hit, it loses power and can even go offline until you move a crew member to repair it. Fires can break out and sustained fire can punch holes in the hull, causing precious oxygen to start leaking out. Thankfully space bar pauses the action so you can plan crew movement and reassign power. Land enough hits on your opponent and you’ll see them satisfyingly break up into little pieces.

Being a Roguelike game; I would have a normally strayed away from a title like FTL. The genre is famously defined by randomness, high difficulty and unfairness. Similar to arcade games of yesteryear. FTL changed my mind with some smart design choices. The game itself is fairly short. A good run will only take an hour or so to play. So dying part way through is not such a problem. There’s plenty of unlocks and achievements to strive for. There not just the standard, well done you’ve played the game achievements either. They actually challenge you to use a ship in particular manner and reward you with new ship layouts.

The aesthetic design of the game is clean and crisp. The sprites in the game are of a very high quality and are backed up by an excellent bit tune-esque soundtrack. The sound effects are also cleverly chosen to suit the atmosphere of the game, whilst providing clear feedback of what’s happening.

There’s plenty to discover on each journey. The random events are well designed and often given you tough choices to make. Some enemies are smart enough to beg for their life, offering you a bounty. Others fire up their engines to try and make an escape.  The environments such as nebulae give you a chance to delay Rebel pursuers. Asteroid belts, solar flares and ion storms also add twists to your combat plans.

Overall, FTL has just jumped its way onto my list of favourite games of the year. It provides a lot of entertainment for a very sensible price. There’s even an easy mode for people like myself who want to play with all the cool toys, rather than being turned into space dust on a regular basis. And FTL is one of the first Kickstarter game projects to see release. The small development team has really delivered for those who backed it.