One of the most fun little games I have played in a long time. Frustrating in places, and yet always an entertaining journey.

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Click for Gameplay Trailer - Review

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Graphics:
+ harmonious pixel art
+ clearly designed
- little variety

Sound:
+ perfect retro soundtrack
- no voice output

Atmosphere:
+ smashing retro charm
+ bonding to crew
+ exciting hunting through the galaxy

Control:
+ good and clear interface
+ easy mouse and keyboard control

Game Size:
+ huge replayability
+ 10 spaceships with different layouts
+ many items, upgrades and tactics
+ new contents with the FREE advanced edition
+ easy, normal and hard difficult
+ quests with several solutions
+ units gain exp
- elements repeat with time

KI:
+ enemy crew react clever
+ ki shoot specific systems

Control my own ship through the unknown that is the final frontier. FTL (Faster Than Light); a space simulator with strategic and tactical elements. It’s also a game where when you die, you have to start over - there are no spare lives.
The setup for FTL is simple: you are captaining a Federation ship with information how to beat the Rebel fleet. The problem is that you have to get across the mostly hostile galaxy (which is broken up into eight sectors).

The majority of the gameplay is running your ship, which uses various main systems (weapons, shields, engines, lift support, medbay etc) and sub systems (piloting, sensors, and doors). The catch is that every system uses power, and you only have a limited amount.
You can see with a single top-down glance of your craft, shields are in one room, weapons in another etc. Enemies damage those rooms of your ship, the corresponding systems shut down. If your shield room goes down, every shot will damage your ship. If you lose O2, your team will soon be gasping for their next breath.

Your ship is upgradable, so while you can increase the total power your ship has, you also need to upgrade your systems, which takes up more power. You never have enough power to have everything at 100%.
You gather or buy weapon upgrades, various ship gear and crewmen, and the scrap that you need to upgrade your ship. You put scrap points into enhancing the main reactor, shields, life support, sensors, and so forth. There is a great balance between improving systems and improving the reactor. You are on a constant seesaw deciding how to spend your scrap to make for the most efficient ship, as all these systems give you offensive and defensive ratings and abilities that are crucial in battle.

The true beauty of FTL is the journey through the galaxy. Systems are divided into sectors, most of which come with themes where they are loaded with nebulae, controlled by pirates or coming across a space station under attack by giant alien spiders. Many of these points will give you the option of whether you want to get involved or just leave.
Some of your options will change depending on your crew composition and equipment, like if you send your robotic Engi crewmember into a quarantine zone, and that keeps them fresh for replaying. Some even turn into quest chains that unlock new ships for your next playthrough.

When you’re fighting an enemy ship you have a lot of decisions to make. You have to pay attention to your power levels and which systems you are using. You'll need to make sure your crew is in the right places and dealing with any issues that may come up.
Battles run in pausable real time, with you in control of all ship functions and crewmen. All ships in the game are shown with dedicated rooms housing systems like shields, weapons, engines, sensors, and oxygen.
Do you take down the enemy shields to try to finish off a foe quickly, or go after his weapons to keep him from destroy your hull? You also have to make tough calls on what weapons to use. Missiles, for instance, can go right through enemy shields, but you have a limited number of them available so you have to use them wisely. At the same time, you have to make the same calls on what systems to repair on your own ship when you take damage, as everything needs to be fixed manually, and you never seem to have enough crewmen to take on everything. Do you restore the shields? Do you get the weapons back up? Do you tackle those fires in the sensor room?

In FTL, you will die a lot and have to start over a lot, but that is OK. You will enjoy it, because each time you die, you learn something. After a couple of hours, you realize that there are a fairly small number of encounters in the various star systems. All of them are randomly mixed up for each new game, but this just changes up the order in which you see them. But there is a lot to do for a Captain, unlock new ships, beat higher difficulty and explore the galaxy.
The free Advanced Edition update added a new eighth race called Lanius, which drain oxygen from any room they occupy, making them good for deterring boarding parties and for attacking drone ships. There are a ton of other additions as well.
Faster Than Light is a great and that will take over your life for many, many hours.
It’s amazing and you should definitely check it out!

Score: 84 / 100

Sorry for my bad english. This is my review account, because the low playtime.
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The game that shows you:
If you play fairly, you will die.
If you be ruthless, you will die.
If you are the good samaritan of the galaxy, you will die.
If you are tactical, you will die.
If you are a coward, you wll die.
If you cheated yourself everything needed to survive, you will die.

Apart from that, great game!

10/10

Before you buy this game you have to ask yourself a few questions.
Do I like dying?
Do I like dying in space?
Do I like dying in space with the knowledge that I let down an entire race of people?
Do I like doing any of the above violently and explosively?
Do I like lasers and giant space spiders?
If you answered yes to any of the above please seek treatment immediately.
Also I gave the game a 10/10 would go to therapy again

FTL is like solving a Rubik's cube, it's fairly simple if you know what to do, but then the Rubik's cube starts unsolving itself, your hands tun in to stubs and your house is on fire.
10/10 would die again.

Captains log: Stardate 46154.2

It has been an interesting few weeks. Between the constant raids on my ship, Ion Storms and Solar flares, the crew now has the projected service lifetime of 3 days. If it wasn't for the clone machine I myself would have been gone a long time ago. On our journey back to the Federation base, I can't help but wonder if I've done this before... Sometimes when on the bridge I swear I have experienced the events unfolding before - An untrustworthy slug merchant, an infestation of alien spiders on a nearby station. Nevertheless, even with this uneasy feelings we press on towards the next sector, hoping that it won't be another god-damn Mantis homeworld.

Picard version twenty-three signing off.

- Named my crew after my best friends;
- They died charred like hell after a solar flare ♥♥♥♥ed my spaceship;
- Was depressed for 35 seconds;

Life is unfair.

11/10 would burn them again.

downloaded 3 different cheats and used all exploits possible


still died



10/10

A space ship sim.
Pros. Cool mods, heaps of replayablity, awesome soundtrack, hard as hell, all that and more for only $10.
Cons. Can sometimes feel like the game cheats.
10/10 would die again.

* This is a game, about.......well:

+ weapons
+ crew gathering and management
+ survive in your ship and give it your personal touch
+ hundreds of variables, combination and type of combat
+ good amount of ships type and races
+ tactical
+ worth more than its actual price

- no endless mode
- no saving slots (die and retry type, but this sucks when you like your ship)
- corridor world
- no sequel

do:
buy it and play it

don't:
judge on trailers and graphics


*****

Mantis board ship. Eat crew.
Hull breach, crew suffocate.
Fire on deck. Crew burn to death.
Ship explodes. Crew dies.
Slavers attack ship. sell crew as slaves.
Out of fuel. Crew wait patiently to die.

10/10. would kill crew again.

On accident I took the medicine needed for an entire planet to survive.

11/10

Dark Souls came home drunk again. It was the third time this week. By now The Oregon Trail had grown used to such tumultuous behavior, even on a nightly basis. He stumbled through the doorway hollering about some curse of the undead. The Oregon Trail, keen on diffusing such situations, offered Dark Souls a place on the bed and a glass of estus. "Would you like something to eat?" she asked. "We took down a bison today." He shook his head and took her hand. "You are so beautiful. Did you know that?" The Oregon Trail blushed. After all these years he still had his charms about him. "The first flame may be dying, but I want you to know that your flame is always lit in my heart." She caressed his face. There was no denying that he was a one-of-a-kind gaming experience. His atmosphere, striking; his storytelling, excellent; not to mention his combat, addictive and unique. The Oregon Trail blew out the candle and pressed SPACE BAR to continue.

Nine months later FTL was born.

REVIEW HAIKU

My ship is burning

Rockets can ignore your sheilds

Falling to pieces

The only game where beating it on "Normal" should be given respect.
Also I swear to Umbasa if I fight more space spiders...

A very challenging game that will take you some time to learn - either on your own or through online guides. But once you understand the concepts behind the game you'll find this to be a highly rewarding and greatly replayable game.

FTL is a unique game, unlike anything you've played before. It mixes RTS combat with turn-based navigation and a story generator that will make you think well every decision you make. Its randomness is a bit too much, but this is what makes it so special: it's impossible to know what awaits you.

The game is cheap, has a huge replay value, thanks to its roguelike elements, comes with a free integrated expansion and mod support. There's a lot of cool mods made by the community (you can find them at www.ftlgame.com), including the Captain's Edition, an unofficial expansion that adds tons of content.

Judging by the screenshots, FTL looks like a complicated game to play, but fear not, it isn't. It's quite simple to be honest. And surprisingly addictive. If you want a game to play over and over again, FTL can be your next choice.

There are some games, which you can easily describe in a sentence. Army man shoots another army man, the team of Russia, Aztecs and Rome gets destroyed by the sneaky Gandhi, survivor walks for an hour, finds another survivor and drinks bleach. Yet, as much as I try to put FTL into a single sentence, I keep failing. A space-ship commander simulator, which lets you relive your captain fantasies of Star Trek? An easy to pick up rogue-lite, which will make you scream as your three hours’ worth of upgrades are blasted into junk by the final boss? A story, with an outcome almost entirely the same every time you play, but with a journey worth an entire sci-fi novel by itself? All of those things and much, much more are present here.

FTL stands for Faster Than Light. A term usually used in various science fiction works. Just like this game. You might command a ship consisting of a bunch of humans and a slug, going through the Rock homeworlds and getting ambushed by space pirates. You direct all your power to the weapons, blast them a few rounds and then masterfully evade their gigantic missile by activating your cloaking device. After the pirates beg for mercy, you ponder for a minute about how much scrap and fuel can you get if you’d leave them or destroy them. Moments later, their orange-and-purple ship is obliterated into thousands of tiny pieces in spectacular 2D graphics. Your crew has just finished fixing the oxygen bay and you’re ready to move out. As you’re about to engage your FTL Engine, you take a second to admire the gorgeous scenery, I mean, space. Space can be really beautiful too, you know. Three minutes later your whole crew dies to killer Rock-men, who boarded your ship. Time to start again.

FTL stands for Flying Till Losing. Because once you lose you can’t fly. Unless you restart the game. But why would you restart such an amazing run with a space-monk Zoltan Cruiser. They might be weak in melee combat, but their super-shields disable enemy boarding systems, so killer Rock-men aren’t a problem now. Navigating through the map, you see a distress signal left by someone. Great, people in distress always mean there’s some money, err, scrap to be found! Bah, another pirate ambush. Oh well, all you have to do is send all power to the guns and… BOOM! Your ship is nigh-unstoppable. Oh man, in space nobody can hear you scream, but the sounds of explosion and lasers shooting are so amazing, almost as awesome as the battle music! The themes are just great, they accompany, but not overshadow what happens in the game. Well, time to move on. Six minutes later you find yourself unable to escape the pursuing rebels and clash against one of their giant ships. Your super shield is gone almost immediately, and you meekly Zoltan crew dies from the engulfing flames. Let’s restart.

FTL stands for Failing To Leave. Basically, this is one addictive game. Yes, frustration might get you, since it’s almost inevitable that your game will end up as a loss, this game is that hard. However, various unlockable ships and layouts help give some sense of progression, as this is a permanent-death game. Still, after a break, you will want to play more. Boot the game up, maybe choose a different ship. Yeah, the Engi Layout B seems cool-enough. Different ships not only change the visuals, but essentially the way you play. Standard ships might use the “blast-and-away” tactics, but horrible space-bugs Mantis usually try to get their prey by boarding. Space-human-robots (seeing a pattern here? SPACE!) Engies love to use drones and that means that they rarely do all the fighting themselves, instead, relying on autonomous robots to protect or attack. Alternative ship layouts take it one step further, in Engi case, there’s only one crew-member on board, rest of them are drones. That would be extremely problematic, however, various updates and even mods help the game get even more complex. For example, Captain’s Edition mod allows the sole Engi create new crewmember holograms. With an army of holo-friends, my Engi is ready to win this game. Twelve minutes later, the Engi ship runs out of fuel, getting lost in deep space. We will try again.

FTL also stands for Flailing Through Levels. Your Rock cruiser finally manages to reach close to the final stage. Take a moment, go ahead, and reflect what a run was that. You saved a space station from an outbreak, helped the Zoltans reach nirvana, beat the mighty Mantis pirate KazaaakplethKilik and even unlocked his ship. You fought countless pirates, saved a defective rebel and helped lay off a siege of a friendly space station. One last foe until you’re ready to fight what awaits at the end of the game. The huge rebel space-ship proves no match for your skills, as you seamlessly transfer power from guns, to engines, to clone bay, all while choosing which parts of the opposing ship should be destroyed. The dream scenario: a victory against a worthy foe with minimal losses. You take a deep breath, time to see what lies in the final level. Eighteen minutes later, you enjoy the final moments of a Rock cruiser, little flaming bits of it flying in space. The boss was so close to defeat, yet you still lost. We are ready to win next time.

I've heard a lot about this game, and finally decided to see what the hype was about.
I was greeted with an intense micro-management rogue-like, that keeps me wondering if my ship is going to catch on fire, or if the next beacon is going to give me some new super ray gun.
All in all, the replayability is high, the soundtrack is great, and I can see myself playing this way into the future.

BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO YOU FOR NO REASON: THE GAME