![]() It's distressingly easy to lose track of some important component in the middle of a critical battle, and be reduced to your constituent atoms before you know it. The issue for this mobile version of the game was always going to be replicating the sublime ease with which the interface of the PC version allowed you to co-ordinate these factors without being overwhelmed.Ī lot of clever design has gone into the port - little touches like swiping up and down to change the power levels of various systems, and automatically pausing when you target weapons.īut it's not quite enough. What's really astonishing about FTL is the synergy, how all the little systems in the game work together to offer a level of challenge and strategy far greater than this deceptively simple game appears to have. It's still there in the morning when you rise, bleary eyed, trying desperately to think about something else and failing. It's a game that works its way under your eyelids and sits imprinted on your pupils like burning plasma as you attempt to sleep. So when your ship and crew are reduced to little more than cosmic dust, it's usually because you failed to refuel, failed to check for fires, failed to co-ordinate your boarding parties with your weapon salvoes properly.ĭouble exclamation marks are rarely a good thing. The bulk of play revolves around pause-able real-time strategy encounters where you must carefully manage systems, crews, and weapons across mini-maps of the opposing ships. Yet while some of the encounters resolve into simple yes/no choices where you can have little idea what the "correct" pick is, most of the game feels entirely fair. As you flee desperately you'll run into pirates, vicious aliens like Rocks and Mantis, infestations of interstellar spiders, and worse. You're being pursued across outer space by an entire fleet of enormous warships, and it's critical that you stay one step ahead of them at all costs. ![]() The "hard" version doesn't even bear thinking about. There's a button on the start screen comfortingly labelled "easy" but it is most assuredly a lie. "Engines critical" is rarely a good thing. The game sees you piloting a starship through various sectors, trying to deliver a critical message to high command before joining the final showdown yourself.Īlong the way you'll upgrade your ship, acquire and train crew, fight numerous interstellar battles, and uncover the secrets of a surprisingly rich and complex universe.Īt least, you will if you can learn to survive more than a few jumps. In the intervening years fans and developers have tinkered with, innovated upon, and polished up the formula in search of the ideal balance of skill and chance, difficulty and narrative progress.Īnd in FTL, they've come the closest to perfection so far. A few lines illuminating the backgrounds of new crewmen, and some more generous blueprint dispensing would nudge this unmissable sci-fi story generator even closer to perfection.It's amazing how the twin pillars of archaic game Rogue - random levels and permanent death - managed to inspire a whole genre. Scanning the game's impressive superstructure for vulnerable exhaust ports and shot traps, just about the only weakpoints I've managed to identify are the lack of personnel histories, and the painfully slow rate of vessel unlocks. Even Ben Prunty's twinkling soundtrack fits beautifully. ![]() You're forced to drift forlorn and regret-wracked waiting for either a good Samaritan or a rebel coup-de-grace.įTL feels like a project that's been thoughtfully tweaked over several years. Running out of fuel is one of the game's scariest situations. So far I've refused to hand over any crew to bullying slavers, but have on several occasions had to sell indispensable kit in order to finance essential repairs or fill an empty tank. Bad luck and poor decisions regularly lead to heartbreaking setbacks and sacrifices. ![]() There are hundreds of possible encounters, and countless ways of improving your ship. ![]()
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