by R834, 22nd September 2012
 FTL: Faster Than Light Release Date: 14th September 2012 Available For: PC Reviewed On: PC | FTL: Faster Than Light is a roguelike, real time spaceship simulator that gives you control of a small ship and its crew, and sets you on an intergalactic voyage to return important information to the Federation. It's a dangerous journey though, and you'll be fighting off pirates, over-aggressive drones and Rebel scouts, all while the main Rebel fleet slowly advances towards you. |
Each run starts out in the first sector of a randomly generated universe, and by hyperspace jumping between beacons, players must reach the exit beacon in order to jump to the next sector, on the way to their goal. In each sector there's around 20 beacons, and every sector jump presents two choice, so there's a fair bit of freedom.
FTL is a game that requires little narrative, so has little. Most of what could be called a story occurs in the text prompts, which describe the sector you've warped in to, and often give you choices. These choices should not be taken lightly - while there's often rewards for helping out strangers and making risky decisions, the random outcomes can seriously harm your chances of success and / or give you nothing in return.
For example: you run across a human-colonised planet, and they ask for your help in a mass riot. Sure, you could receive a hefty reward for helping the planetary authorities, or you could end up losing a teammate, which later into the game prevents you from repairing one of your systems and dooms you all. It's surprisingly deep stuff, and hasty decisions are inadvisable.
Run-ins with enemies are the core of FTL's gameplay. Ships are equipped with weaponry and shields to defend themselves against attackers, and you'll be making good use of these. Players will have to keep an eye on their hull integrity, and the status of their engines, weapons, oxygen pumps, shields and life support, as well as crew members, as they're bombarded by enemy weaponry.
Damage to the hull can only be fixed at certain Store beacons in the region, and will require scrap to do so. These Stores also allow you to stock up on Fuel, ammunition for finite weaponry, and drone parts, as well as buy new weapons, ship systems and occasionally crew members.
Your ship has a fixed amount of energy slots it can use on systems (although this is upgradable), but systems can be turned on and off at will, so managing how much power they're drawing is a vital part of battle strategy.
Sometimes systems will get shut down by damage from enemy weapons, but the damage can be fixed by crew members, with multiple crew members able to fit into rooms to speed up the process. However, it's not quite that simple: crew members repairing systems are no longer manning them, which gives a significant advantage - manning weapons reduces cooldown time, for example - so you'll need to make difficult choices as to the importance of each system at that moment in time.
And it's not only cannon fire you need to be watching out for: there are weapons that will go straight through shields; ones that will cause small EMPs, temporarily shutting down the targeted system; and ones can cause fires inside the ship, which spread and cause damage to systems, as well as to crew in range of the blaze.
Fires can be put out by crew, and also by opening the air locks to suck the oxygen out of rooms, represented by rooms turning red. However doing so temporarily prevents crew members from remaining in those room for extended periods, as crew members will be injured by the lack of air. Similarly, breaches in the hull will result in unintentional loss of oxygen until it can be repaired by a crew members.
When a combination of damages occur simultaneously is when the difficulty starts to stack up. Nightmare scenarios such as fire damage to the oxygen systems, or shields being knocked out in a room that now has no air require quick thinking to stop your ship becoming pirate loot.
To aid you slightly, the spacebar allows you to instantly pause the game at any time to access the situation. You can make commands from here as well, so everything should go into motion when you unpause.
Particular eye needs to be kept on your overall hull integrity, your Fuel (used with every FTL jump), and the status of your crew members - if any drop to zero, it's game over. FTL deals with failure with permadeath: on your next go you'll be all the way back at the beginning. It's a punishing system, but forces you to think ahead, and FTL's pick-up-and-play gameplay allows such a mechanic.
The game's visuals are appealing pixel graphics, which work well, and the music is great too, with techno soundtracks backing laser fire and explosions, giving the game a real sense of pace.
However, the game does suffer from a lack of a resolution option, locking the game at 1280x720 and forcing anyone with a different screen size to play either windowed, full-screen bordered (pictured), or by stretching, none of which are ideal as somebody playing on a 1080p monitor. I can't even imagine what it must be like for those with resolutions below 720p and /or using non-16:9 monitors.
At a core gameplay level, it can get a little repetitive as well, and the sheer randomness of it heavily dictating whether you'll be breezing through empty sectors, or going up against fortified warships in meteor fields is often a little unfair.
Overall, it's an excellent game, with a simple but effective art and music direction, successfully combining fast-paced action, quick-thinking strategy, and the terrifying prospect of a permadeath failure, but loses marks for a lack of resolution control and the potential for getting repetitive.
Final Score
9/10
FTL is a game that requires little narrative, so has little. Most of what could be called a story occurs in the text prompts, which describe the sector you've warped in to, and often give you choices. These choices should not be taken lightly - while there's often rewards for helping out strangers and making risky decisions, the random outcomes can seriously harm your chances of success and / or give you nothing in return.
For example: you run across a human-colonised planet, and they ask for your help in a mass riot. Sure, you could receive a hefty reward for helping the planetary authorities, or you could end up losing a teammate, which later into the game prevents you from repairing one of your systems and dooms you all. It's surprisingly deep stuff, and hasty decisions are inadvisable.
Damage to the hull can only be fixed at certain Store beacons in the region, and will require scrap to do so. These Stores also allow you to stock up on Fuel, ammunition for finite weaponry, and drone parts, as well as buy new weapons, ship systems and occasionally crew members.
Your ship has a fixed amount of energy slots it can use on systems (although this is upgradable), but systems can be turned on and off at will, so managing how much power they're drawing is a vital part of battle strategy.
Sometimes systems will get shut down by damage from enemy weapons, but the damage can be fixed by crew members, with multiple crew members able to fit into rooms to speed up the process. However, it's not quite that simple: crew members repairing systems are no longer manning them, which gives a significant advantage - manning weapons reduces cooldown time, for example - so you'll need to make difficult choices as to the importance of each system at that moment in time.
And it's not only cannon fire you need to be watching out for: there are weapons that will go straight through shields; ones that will cause small EMPs, temporarily shutting down the targeted system; and ones can cause fires inside the ship, which spread and cause damage to systems, as well as to crew in range of the blaze.
When a combination of damages occur simultaneously is when the difficulty starts to stack up. Nightmare scenarios such as fire damage to the oxygen systems, or shields being knocked out in a room that now has no air require quick thinking to stop your ship becoming pirate loot.
To aid you slightly, the spacebar allows you to instantly pause the game at any time to access the situation. You can make commands from here as well, so everything should go into motion when you unpause.
Particular eye needs to be kept on your overall hull integrity, your Fuel (used with every FTL jump), and the status of your crew members - if any drop to zero, it's game over. FTL deals with failure with permadeath: on your next go you'll be all the way back at the beginning. It's a punishing system, but forces you to think ahead, and FTL's pick-up-and-play gameplay allows such a mechanic.
The game's visuals are appealing pixel graphics, which work well, and the music is great too, with techno soundtracks backing laser fire and explosions, giving the game a real sense of pace.
At a core gameplay level, it can get a little repetitive as well, and the sheer randomness of it heavily dictating whether you'll be breezing through empty sectors, or going up against fortified warships in meteor fields is often a little unfair.
Overall, it's an excellent game, with a simple but effective art and music direction, successfully combining fast-paced action, quick-thinking strategy, and the terrifying prospect of a permadeath failure, but loses marks for a lack of resolution control and the potential for getting repetitive.
Final Score
9/10