Tuesday 2 October 2012

FTL: This Game is Incredible

Today I'd like to talk about a success story from Kickstarter. Basically for those who haven't heard of it, Kickstarter is one of the better known crowd funding sites. Here, people promote their product and ask for donations so that they can successfully fund their projects. Without Kickstarter, many smaller, independently owned companies and groups would not have been able to see their ideas come to fruition. A good example would be Brian and Brandon's book.

Another would be the game Faster Than Light.


The game revolves you, your crew and your ship. The Galactic Federation has been all but destroyed by Rebels but you have critical data that can defeat them. Somehow, you have to jump across enough sectors using your faster than light warp drive to deliver this data in one piece.

And this is all while the Rebel fleet is right behind you, trying to catch up and stop you. Each sector contains an exit that will allow you to jump to the next sector, and every sector is broken up by various waypoints which your ship can jump between.

Everytime you play the sectors are randomly generated so it's a new and unique experience each time. 

Sound simple so far? Here's where it gets tricky.

Here we go...

I know I have several Sci-Fi fans, people who loved shows like Firefly, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. Who's ever wanted to command their own crew? Yell at someone to fix the engines because a volley of enemy missiles have damaged them. Meanwhile you divert power to the shields to protect the ship but intruders have boarded so you need to to stop them too. You target your own lasers to destroy the enemy weapon's array but by now the boarding party has already destroyed the oxygen generators (causing your crew to slowly asphyxiate).

At least someone is extinguishing the fire in the medbay.

FTL lets you do all that and more. Every possible function and upgrade in a starship is available to you. Every system of your ship requires power to work, upgrading a system means it needs more power and with limited power you have to balance and make sacrifices to survive. I play extremely defensively, maxing out my shields, grabbing cloaking abilities, and using weaponry that disable enemy systems. My friend prefers to max out on offensive weapons, destroy your enemy before he touches you. I've see other people use automated drones or send their own crew to infiltrate other ships.

Every waypoint you travel to has a chance of an event happening. It can range from a simple automated Rebel scout attacking you, to answering a distress signal, or entering an asteroid field with Pirates waiting. And you could just decide to run away from a fight, sometimes distress signals are traps, and maybe the Pirates upon realizing it was a bad idea to attack you, beg for their lives. But it's up to you to spare them or not.

Every jump is random!

I'd recommend FTL to anyone with any interest in the Sci-fi genre. It is not an easy game and it's not a forgiving game either. If any of your crew members die, it's permanent, shops and repairs are uncommon and who says you can afford their wares anyways? All it takes is one bad encounter to cripple your ship for the rest of the mission and if you die, you have to start over.

And you'll want to start over. Just one more time, maybe you'll be luckier, maybe you have a better idea of how to do things, or you could be just masochistic. Whatever your reason, FTL has additional unlockable ships, achievements, high score recordings and potential for modding. Available on PC, Mac and Linux for only $10 on Steam I thought it was well worth my money. I even ended up buying the soundtrack but that's because I liked the electronic music in it.

22 comments:

  1. Even bought the soundtrack, damn must be as good as you say. I'd yell at them all to fix the ship, but I prefer Stargate to those ones mentioned, Firefly is right up there though.

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  2. Yeah the house is lovely, thanks. This game looks awesome.

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  3. A bit too scifi for me but hell, barely play games anyway.

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  4. This game sounds a little tough but awesome as well, I love the sounds of it man, great review as usual.

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  5. My brother just bought an entire computer system to game...you guys are serious! I see the appeal but feel like once I'm in, I'd be so addicted, lol. I already have a love affair with food and its not going away any time soon--scratch that---EVER, lol.

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  6. I think it is not my type of game...but I'll only known if I try it

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  7. The kickstarter website seems like a great opportunity for anyone with a great idea, who just need funding. I wasn't aware of it before. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

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  8. You lost me at "Each sector contains an exit that will allow you to jump to the next sector, and every sector is broken up by various waypoints which your ship can jump between." Video/computer games are not my speciality. Unless they're SIMS, of course. I LOVE SIMS!

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  9. been hearing a lot about this game, will have to try it out

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  10. haven't played a game in a decade or so :)

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  11. Ok, I'm not going to lie... I am not a gamer. But my hubby and brother are, so I'll share this with them. And thanks for sharing about the Kickstarter site - I've seen some of their videos but never actually knew the motivation behind them!

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  12. Interesting...I was never really a video game fan but my brother is.

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  13. Yeah, my friend was telling me how great this game looks, but I'm not sure it's my kinda game either.

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  14. It does sound and look very fun. I like when they put detail in the details.

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  15. I do like the kickstarter program.
    This game sounds like fun.

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  16. thinking about of updating my gaming pc now ;)

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  17. This sounds like a really cool game.

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