jp
Home Talks and Slides My GameLog Research and Projects Publications Resume Teaching
Back  //   GameBreadth Project  //   Game Ontology Project  //   GameLog

FTL (PC)

Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored
I started playing this game on Tuesday 18 September, 2012  //  I stopped playing this game on: Wednesday 6 April, 2016
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

September 29, 2012 09:34:14 PM
Finally beat it! (on easy, using the not-human ship...I think it's the first one you unlock, it has drones not missiles).

It took me at least 3 attempts before I was able to get to the boss and beat it. It's kind of annoying because the boss is a multi-stage fight and you have to be sort of lucky to get him in the end. If there aren't any repair stations in between the different stages, your screwed.

I guess I should try playing it on hard. But given that I've been able to die without ever leaving the first system, I'm a little bit nervous. I might try some of the other ships while still on easy. Just to see how that goes...

On the "annoying" side of things. It turns out there's a Steam saved game thing or something - and I ended up overwriting one of my "local" saved games...it was one in which I had unlocked a stealth ship... Anyways, for now it's lost. I only got it from completing a sidemission that popped up. Sigh.


September 23, 2012 09:22:32 PM
People have been raving about this game (and I missed the Kickstarter), it was on sale on Steam, so there you go. I had it described as "Rogue, but in space" which is actually a pretty good description. That was, by itself, enough to get me interested, despite the graphics not being "cutting edge" or particularly stylized. I suspect that some people would call them ugly, but to me they're mostly reminiscent of old PC games from the early 90's. I actually don't care too much about the graphics, since the game works and they do the job. What more can you ask for?

As for the whole "rogue-like" aspect? Definitely enjoyable. I've only played 4 games or so (lost them all) and they were all quite different. Picking out the ship parts and hoping you're lucky is a crucial part of the game and thankfully, if you do well enough in a game you can unlock things that then become available in later games. In that sense, it's not entirely self-contained like a lot of Rogue-likes. There is some progression, at least in what I've experienced so far. Curiously, it wasn't until I unlocked a new ship (and used it) that I was able to make some progress - in fact I got the the final battle (and lost), which I think is quite something, even on "Easy".

I hadn't realized that it's definitely worth exploring more than simply jumping as soon as you can to the next sector. It gives you a chance to find new things (e.g. unlock special missions!), so if you have the fuel it's worth it. I'm not so excited about the weapons system. The first ship I played with had missiles, which was a pain because they're always running out. Things went much better with my second ship. This one had some sort of ion cannon (that knocks out systems and shields) as well as a remote droid thingy. I found that ship combat was quite a bit easier with the ion cannon + droids.

What is kind of lame is that, despite it being a steam game, there is no shared saved game across installs - so I've effectively had to unlock some things twice (now maybe three times since I've just installed the game on the home PC).


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria