Game Pick of the Week: FTL: Faster than Light

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Go to the bottom for the TLDR if you don't want to read~

A combination of amazing music, tactical game-play, and the ability to pick it up for a couple minutes or play it for hours, FTL is a must buy for indie game enthusiasts.

You are a captain of a small ship. You are racing against time to deliver a message to the helm of your fleet to warn them of the impending attack. With your sparse, but capable crew, you jettison off into the cosmos, finding adventure, adversity, and success.

FTL by all definition is a tactical game. Despite lacking in a physical story, the best part of the game is just that: you create your own story. The star maps of which you travel, the enemies, and events of the game are all randomly generated, so no two missions are the same. You get to choose from a wide array of ships each with their weaknesses and strengths. You can also unlock ships by doing hidden achievements (which you have to figure out and not Google it!). The gameplay experience is where this game shines. Fighting other ships is pretty straight forward: damage their ship's critical systems, or blow it to smithereens. Each ship has a set of critical systems that provide something to the ship (shields, oxygen, engine, door systems, etc) and the true tactic lies in the decisions you make. Will you tactically knock out the oxygen supply and while the enemy crew is in a frantic rush to fix it take out their engines? Or will you decimate their shields, and cause living hell with your lasers? In addition to enemy ships damaging your ship, there is weather, and asteroid fields to deal with! The game can be paused during a fight so you can think on what to do next. As your ship gets damaged, you will need to divert power from one source to the other and so on. The choices are endless. You can also upgrade your ship's weapons, hire new crew, and upgrade your ship's infrastructure. This game is definitely not an easy game. Even on "normal mode" beating the game the first time is hardly likely. Challenging games like this don't come around very often anymore!

This game isn't a AAA title with eye popping graphics. Instead of focusing on visual aesthetics, FTL focuses on spectacular gameplay. Icing on top the of the cake, FTL has an award winning soundtrack that will make your cruise to space all the more enjoyable!

TLDR: Pros and Cons

Pros-
- Intuitive and tactical gameplay, you can pause to formulate your strategy
- Spectacular music, provides great ambience ingame
- FTL Advanced Edition (the expansion composing of new ships new missions etc.) is free after purchase of the game!
- Randomly generated levels for a different adventure everytime
- User created mods

Cons-
- Learning curve is fairly steep for a seemingly simplistic indie game
- No co-op/online gameplay (we wish!)


Conclusion- If you're a person who loves tactical games with great music, and casual playability, FTL is the game for you!


http://store.steampowered.com/app/212680