14 DAY TRIAL // FTL is a hard, heartbreaking video game that I sometimes hate with all my being and still cannot stop from playing.
The development team at Subset Games has created a game that’s very different from anything else that the gaming industry has produced lately, a mix between the traditional roguelike concept, a number of concepts taken from boardgames and a science fiction theme.
The game tasks you with moving a spaceship through a number of encounters, keeping ahead of a rebel force that’s trying to destroy it, while dealing with the various situations that can appear in different areas of space.
There are two core interactions in FTL: multiple choices linked to a scenario or straight up battles.
The choices seem simple at first but they have such long-term repercussions that I found myself pondering some of them for up to 5 minutes.
The battles are fought in real time, with the ability to pause in order to assess the situation and issue orders, and they mostly focus on dealing more damage to the other ship than you get but with twists like teleports, shield management, fires and drone action.
The fun and the stress in FTL are linked to how you prepare for the various situations and how the player upgrades his ship.
Because of the roguelike structure, death is permanent, which makes each choice matter even more, and I often found myself screaming at myself for the way I had acted a few star nodes before.
There are two criticisms that can be leveled at FTL: it’s a little static, with the same basic setup for all the encounter screens, and a little repetitive, mainly because for all the variation the developers try and include the broad categories remain the same.
The version of the game I played came from Good Old Games, with no DRM and an easy install.
Worth a full Softpedia review? Yes.