The Wonderful Indie Game FTL, An Amazing Rougelike Masterpiece

FTL: Faster Than Light was released a while ago, but I decided to revisit it after playing Dream Warrior. Dream Warrior borrowed much from FTL, but it isn’t as in-depth. I would recommend FTL to anyone who likes roguelikes or strategy games.

This was a hard one for me to review. Like many roguelikes, FTL has a gameplay loop based on dying and starting over. Like other games in the genre, the punishing difficulty keeps me playing, as I want to see how far I can get and what will happen differently.

The game is a bit of a throwback to games from the 90s, and it came out when indie games gained popularity. I didn’t know anything about the game when it first came out, but now that I’ve played it, I can see why it’s such a good game. I had a hard time putting this game down.

Bottom Line Up Front: I think this is a great game! I strongly recommend this to people who like either roguelikes or strategy games.

Narrative

The main narrative is straightforward to follow. You’re trying to deliver secret information on the weaknesses of the rebel flagship to the Federation fleet. You travel from star system to star system, eventually reaching where the rebel and Federation fleets are fighting.

Here is a brief rundown of what happens:

• This isn’t an easy path, though. A fleet follows you during your journey, which creates a sense of danger, which I thought was great.
• Side quests are available along the way. They help you by giving you more resources, crew members, and weapons you need during the game.
• A rebel fleet follows you through the star systems to keep you moving. If they catch up with you, things become much more complicated.

We don’t get much information on why the rebellion is taking place. There are some instances when you can talk with the rebels, but I didn’t pay much attention to what they had to say. The story isn’t that important to me in a game like this. FTL’s gameplay is what carried me through this.  

Gameplay

The gameplay looks very simple when you first look at it. You have a top-down view of your ship, and the star chart is straightforward. Looks can be deceiving, though! I made the mistake of underestimating how much is to do in the game when I started.

Once you get into a battle, the game makes you think about your next move. You can take down the enemy shields, destroy their weapons control system, or try to take out their engines. Sometimes, you’ll run into a fight where the enemy tries to escape, and you’ll need to target their engines or pilots.

Initially, it’s pretty easy, and the chances of something catastrophic happening are rare. I say that, but I’ve had some weird stuff happen, especially when I started. Like when my crew couldn’t fix our oxygen generator in time because the room was also on fire, and everyone died! Which was my fault.

As the game progresses, the difficulty spikes quite a bit. The ships you fight are stronger, more random things happen, and you have a greater chance of running into something catastrophic. This makes the game more fun because you don’t know what will happen.

For example, I had a quest to finish, and when I reached the location, I found that I couldn’t get to the exit. I had to backtrack through the rebel fleet. When you do this, the fights get much harder, and the game throws more crap at you. You can easily get overwhelmed when this happens.

There are a bunch of weapons you can get in the game. It makes customizing your ship fun and forces you to think about what weapons you will carry. Here is a brief list:

• Laser Weapons
• Ion Weapons
• Missile Weapons
• Beam Weapons (My favorite, but can be annoying to use)

When your weapons hit the enemy ship, they can do different things. They can cause fires, breach the hull, or damage systems like weapons or shields. How you fight is entirely up to you, but manage your resources. You can’t fire missiles or use drones if you don’t have any missiles or drone parts.

You need to make sure that several systems on your ship are working. Even the systems that don’t feel necessary at first glance, they become very important when you can’t use them anymore. Like doors and oxygen. Here is a list of the systems:

• Weapons system
• Engines
• Navigation
• Oxygen generator
• Sensors
• Doors, which sounded strange to me until a system broke, and I couldn’t get quickly rid of the fire.
• Shields
• Medical
• Stealth
• Drones
• Teleporter
• Hacking station

You can also get drones, a hacking station—my favorite system in the game—a teleport station to board enemy ships, and cloaking devices. You won’t end up with the same weapons or crew during each playthrough, making the game feel slightly different each time.

Let’s talk about drones real quick. There are three types of drones in the game:

• Attack
• Defensive
• Support

Within these three sections, you have several options. You can send robots to the enemy ship, have repair bots on your ship, have drones that destroy missiles before they hit your ship, and more. It can be a lot of fun if you can get this working right. Just keep an eye on how many drone parts you have.

There are several augmentations you can get as well. These improve some of your systems, like shields, weapons, and navigation. They also can repair your ship and get you more scraps. Here is a very brief list:

• FTL Jammer
• Advanced FTL Navigation
• Reverse Ion Field
• Stealth Weapons
• Shield Charge Booster

There are more, but this is a brief list of the ones I got during my playthrough. These can be fun to mix and match as you tinker with your play style. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a “Best Layout,” as it is all up to how you want to play or what is best for you.

Other playable ships can be unlocked as you play the game. The starting design has variations, each presenting its own challenges to the game. I unlocked some of them; I wouldn’t say I liked the starting play options, but I learned how to use the new ships better as I played the game more.

The crew also plays into the game a bit. There are a few different races in the game, and they add some twists to the gameplay. One race is immune to fire, a better engineer, a better pilot, or a better fighter. Here is a list of the skills that each crew member can learn:

• Pilot
• Engineer
• Shield
• Repair
• Fighting

Several races are in the game, and you can recruit them to your crew. Each has its strengths and weaknesses beyond the specialties listed above. Here is a list of the races in the game:

• Human
• Zolton
• Engi
• Rock
• Slug
• Mantis

The final battle has multiple stages, each harder than the last. You should expect this from an RPG where you have to fight several forms of a boss. I like the final battle a lot. It is as challenging as the rest of the game.

Overall, the gameplay is outstanding. The game can be addictive, as you want to try and do better each time. With several ships and layouts, FTL gives you many reasons to try again and find what works best.

Visuals

When I first started playing, I thought things were small. I don’t have good eyesight, so this won’t be a problem for most people. Like most strategy games, everything you need is right in front of you.

The more I played the game, the more I got used to the graphics. Once I started playing on my laptop, things looked bigger. There are also hotkeys for the weapons, so you don’t have to rely on the mouse as much.

From a graphics standpoint, this reminds me of a few games I played in the 90s. Your crew appears as a few pixels, and the ships look great! I felt like I was playing a game I would have played in high school when I should have been paying attention during computer class.

When things blow up, it’s oddly satisfying. I’m not sure what it is, but I like how the ships slowly break apart and explode. They break apart in chunks like they were made of Lego or something similar.

It looks good when things catch fire or a hull breach. It is easy to see and helps direct the crew to repair the damage. The only problem I had was when a room lost its oxygen. The room turns red first and then gets striped. This was a little hard to notice at times, especially when the battle was particularly difficult.

 It’s also easy to tell when one of your systems has gone down. The icon for the system it turns orange, I think it’s orange, and when it goes down, it turns red. You can also see this by looking at the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

I really like the graphics in this game. I initially didn’t think much of them and was slightly annoyed by how small everything looked. As I kept playing and got used to the game, I realized how amazing they were. They set everything up so that you know what is wrong and what you need to do.

Replayability

FTL is a Roguelike in that you fail and try again. Each time you restart, the map is different. This can be frustrating, but it makes the game stand out in the strategy game genre. With each playthrough being different, you experience a new set of challenges.

• The types of systems you travel through change.
• They can be friendly, controlled by the rebels, controlled by a hostile alien race, controlled by pirates, or an unexplored nebula.
• The quest you get will be different.
• The layout of the systems changes. This will give you different quests and traps.
• Different weapons and systems will be available to you.
• The game will throw different challenges at you as well.

Everything in the game is randomized. You can use the same strategy each time you play the game because things are constantly changing. You get lucky sometimes and have several friendly systems to travel through, or you get be screwed with hostile territories.

I like this part of the game a lot. The gameplay loop made it hard to put the game down. FTL is one of the best indie games because of this simple idea, which creates an almost infinite loop of possibilities for playing through the game.

9/10 FTL is an entertaining game! There were moments in the game where I was frustrated, but it only made me want to do better next time. The gameplay was frustrating in a good way. If you’re into roguelikes or strategy games, then FTL is for you!

Pros

• Easy to Play, Hard to Master
• Several types of Ships to use
• Extremely Replayable

Cons

• Boarders on Frustrating
• Short
• High Difficulty Spikes

Final Thoughts

This was based on a review I did for another website. I wanted to rewrite this for my blog, mainly when I played Dream Warrior. There are many similarities between the two games, and I thought it was important to have a review of FTL on my blog to help explain things.

Trying to figure out the different strategies for each ship can sometimes be a ton of fun. I think everyone who has played this game has their favorite. Learning the various weapons, systems, and drones makes this game so much fun to play, as you get to experiment with new tactics.

I don’t have any tips for playing this game. Just find something that works for you and keep trying to tweak it a little each time you play. That is the best advice I can give you. Don’t be afraid of losing; treat it as a learning experience.

This is one of the better indie games that I’ve played. I don’t always like the roguelike genre, but having it put together with an RTS game works quite well. FTL also has a very enjoyable gameplay loop that will keep you playing without getting too frustrated.