FTL: Faster Than Light is a real-time strategy roguelike game created by indie developer Subset Games, which was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux in September 2012. In the game, the player controls the crew of a single spacecraft, holding critical information to be delivered to an allied fleet, while being pursued by a large rebel fleet.
The player must guide the spacecraft over eight sectors, each with planetary systems and events procedurally generated in a roguelike fashion, while facing rebel and other hostile forces, recruiting new crew, and outfitting and upgrading their ship. Combat takes place in pausable real time, and if the ship is destroyed or all of its crew lost, the game ends, forcing the player to restart with a new ship.
The player controls a spacecraft capable of traveling faster-than-light (FTL). It belongs to the Galactic Federation, which is on the verge of defeat in a war with an exclusively human and xenophobic rebel faction, simply called the Rebellion. The player’s crew intercepts a data packet from the rebel fleet containing information that could throw the rebels into disarray and ensure a Federation victory. The goal is to reach Federation headquarters, waiting several space sectors away, while avoiding destruction from hostile ships or by the pursuing rebel fleet.
At game start, the player chooses a spacecraft to start with, each one with a different layout and containing a different mix of weapons, systems (piloting, engines, weapons, oxygen, etc.), and crew. The game randomly generates eight space sectors similar to roguelike games, with roughly twenty waypoints (called “beacons”) in each sector. The player must “jump” the ship between waypoints, normally unaware what awaits at each point, and make headway to an “exit” point leading to the next sector. The player’s ship can accumulate scrap (in-game currency), equipment (ranging from weapons to drones and various ship augmentations) and extra crew members by maximizing the number of beacons (and hence events/other ships) they visit, but each encounter has the potential to deal damage to their ship and/or crew. The player can revisit waypoints, but each warp jump consumes fuel and causes the rebel fleet to advance in each sector, and slowly take over more of the beacons. Once a beacon is taken over, jumping to the beacon will result in an encounter with a dangerous elite rebel fighter, while only ever granting the player 1 unit of fuel upon defeat. In later sectors, enemies are tougher and have better weaponry but also yield increased rewards when beaten.
There are eight different species of crew in the game: Humans, Engi, Zoltan, Mantis, Rock, Slug, Lanius, and Crystal. Members of these species can all be acquired by the player or found manning enemy ships. Each species has different strengths and weaknesses based on their physiology.
FTL is currently 75% off in steam
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