Last Week's Games: FTL

Well that week didn’t go quite as planned! The Pathfinder game I said I was going to run at the end of last week was cancelled, since one of the players – sadly the one who hosts the game – was taken ill and couldn’t host it. I wish him a speedy recovery and hopefully we’ll get back on it at some point next month, but it looks like I won’t be playing any more roleplaying games until then.

I didn’t have a huge amount of time for playing games either. I progressed a little further into the campaign in Spider Man, beating a double-pronged boss battle (I won’t spoil it if you haven’t played the game; if you have, you’ll know who I mean!) and as I mentioned last week, getting ever closer to the endgame.

Your starting ship...

No, the game I spent the largest amount of time playing this week was FTL: Faster Than Light on my laptop. This is among the first games I bought for the PC, way back in 2012 when I was using a Windows 7 laptop. I saw a review for it by Angry Joe and decided to check it out! The hardware on my laptop was by no means designed for playing games so my games were somewhat limited, but FTL will run on just about anything so for once it was an option for me.

And what a delight it was! If you don’t know, it’s a space game in which you have to transport vital information about the Rebel Fleet to The Federation. It’s interesting to see the Rebels being the enemy for a change, though the line between good and bad is somewhat blurred – the Federation purports to be a coalition of effort to colonize space between the various races of the galaxy, and the Rebels are made up almost entirely of humans trying to wipe out Federation control. Xenophobic and oppressive, one would think, but since the alien races that are meant to be a part of the Federation are every bit as likely to attack you, one might reasonably wonder if the Rebels have a point. It’s Firefly meets Star Trek in theme, and a joy to play.

You control the power allocation, action and various crew of a star ship, and have to play through several short tasks in order to traverse the galaxy and deliver your info. The layout and interface suggests a strategy game, but I have found it works as a Roleplaying game as well. Here’s your ship, here’s your crew, here’s what it can do, here’s the situation the game has put in front of you; what are you going to do about it?

Well that could have gone better!

But as I was playing through the game, I found myself wondering who it is for. I enjoy the game enough to recommend it to anybody with a pulse, but it’s not new; it was released in 2012 and games have, by their very nature, evolved since then. But seven years later, I’m still playing it, still discovering new things, still enjoying it. It was acclaimed at the time for it’s excellence in design, and it still holds up today. The graphics were nowhere near on par with what was available even at release, but the almost minimalist art style looks as good now as it did back then. The soundtrack is gorgeous, and the effects are lovely as well. The Rogue-like gameplay is designed for many runs, and while it takes a little too long to get to the endgame (I only ever managed it a couple of times before the major content update in 2014, and never since,) the sheer scale of things to do in between is staggering. No two runs are ever the same; there’s a lot of value in it.

So I would suggest that, if your principle experience of playing games is on console and mobile devices, and you’re wondering what PC games do so differently to make it a worthwhile investment, you could do a lot worse than try this game out. It will challenge you on the right level, and will keep on giving long after you’ve replaced the machine you play it on!