One Life Left: Faster Than Light

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be the captain of a spaceship carrying the Federation’s last hope on the run from an evil rebel fleet? Of course you have. That’s why programmer Matthew Davis and artist Justin Ma of Subset Games created FTL: Faster Than Light. In FTL, you are in complete control of your ship and its crew as you race across the system to deliver valuable information to the Allied Fleet. Along the way, you run into all walks of alien life and every event that you’d imagine would take place in the outer reaches of space. Space pirates, asteroid fields, plasma storms, lost alien races, FTL has them all.

When I say you are in command of everything on the ship, I mean everything. Shields, engines and weapons are all at your fingertips. You decide where your crew members are at any given time. While most of the ship is automated, sometimes a crew member is needed for maintenance or to speed function up a bit. Each crew member has a specific skill set that makes him or her better at some jobs on the ship than others. You might have a designated pilot that stays at the wheel while another crew member lives in the engine room. Another crew member might be your designated bruiser who waits around for someone to try and board the ship. Your crew learns over time, so the more they perform a given task, the more efficient in completing that task they become. In addition, each alien race has its own set of perks. For example, humans are quick learners, Zoltan can power a room simply by being in it, and the Lanius can survive in a room without any oxygen. The list goes on to include several more races each with a unique ability.

The game progresses as you move through sectors, each of which has a theme given in its description decided by which race occupies the area. Along the way, you upgrade your ship with weapons, drones, and other useful augmentations you find or purchase. Within those sectors, there are points which you must go through to get to the exit beacon. Each point has a randomly generated event associated with it. Some points contain combat events, while others contain merchants that offer upgrades for your ship or crew members for hire. Others still offer unique events of which you determine the outcome. Most points offer you rewards for completing the event like fuel, scrap (the game’s currency), or upgrades to your ship.

FTL’s diverse combat takes place in pause-able real time. The goal is to take down the enemy ship by eliminating its shields and then taking aim at its primary systems. The game allows for this to be done in a variety of ways. You could take a brute force approach and outfit your ship with the biggest lasers and missile launchers you can get your hands on. On the other hand, you can use a little more cunning and finesse by outfitting your ship with a teleporter and sending several of your crew on board to take out the ship from the inside. There are other strategies that include the use of drones, cloaking systems and ion cannons that temporarily take a system offline.

Because there are countless ways to play and things to experience in the game, FTL is designed to be played again and again. Each run through takes about two to three hours if you are successful, which is rare. FTL is a throwback to the old space arcade games in more than just its visual detail and backstory. In the fashion of yesterday’s games, it is also very hard to beat. The game has three difficulty settings and I personally have only led a single successful mission on its medium difficulty. There is nothing more heartbreaking than making it to the final sector and losing to the Rebel Flagship. Unfortunately, there is also nothing that makes you want to click the restart button more and try one more time.

Overall, I found FTL to be extremely enjoyable. For coming from such a small development team (two people), it has an astounding amount of content. There are always new ships to unlock and events to encounter. At times, it can be frustrating when your run ends early because you just couldn’t find fuel. However, these times are few and far between. FTL does exactly what it sets out to do: create a great arcade-like space game that can be played over and over. It is for this reason that I give FTL: Faster Than Light a 9 out of 10.