FTL: Faster Than Light is a roguelike game made by Subset Games, an independent development team. It was released for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux in September 2012. In the game, players control the crew of a spacecraft carrying important information to an allied fleet. The spacecraft is being chased by a large rebel fleet. Players must navigate the spacecraft through eight sectors, each with randomly created planetary systems and events. Along the way, players face enemies, recruit new crew members, and upgrade their ship. Combat happens in real time and can be paused. If the ship is destroyed or all crew members are lost, the game ends, and players must start over with a new ship.
The idea for FTL came from tabletop board games and other space combat games that required managing a ship’s systems. Subset Games, a team of two developers, funded the game themselves and entered it into indie game competitions. Positive feedback from players and judges led the team to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the game. They collected twenty times more money than they had asked for. The extra funds were used to improve the game’s artwork, music, and story writing.
FTL became one of the most successful Kickstarter projects for video games. It was released in September 2012 and received good reviews. An updated version, FTL: Advanced Edition, added new ships, events, and gameplay features. It was released for free to existing players in April 2014 and was also available for purchase on iPad devices. Critics praised the game’s creativity. FTL is recognized as one of the games that helped make the "roguelite" genre more popular. This genre uses some, but not all, rules from traditional roguelike games.
Synopsis
The player controls a spacecraft that can travel faster than light. The spacecraft has a crew made up of humans, aliens, or both. It belongs to the Galactic Federation, which is close to losing a war against a group called the Rebellion, which believes humans are superior. The player's crew received a data packet from the rebel fleet that contains unknown information, which could cause the rebels to become confused and help the Federation win. The goal is to reach the Federation's headquarters, which is located several space sectors away, while avoiding attacks from enemy ships or the rebel fleet. The final sector ends with a battle against the Rebel Flagship, a fight with several parts that results in either a Federation victory or defeat.
Gameplay
At the start of the game, the player selects a spacecraft, each with a unique top-down layout and different weapons, systems (like piloting, engines, and oxygen), and crew members. The game creates eight randomly generated space sectors, similar to roguelike games, with about twenty waypoints (called "beacons") in each sector. The player must "jump" their ship between beacons, often without knowing what will happen at each location, and work toward an "exit" point to move to the next sector. As the player visits more beacons, they can collect in-game currency (called "scrap"), equipment (such as weapons, drones, and ship upgrades), and additional crew members. However, each encounter may damage the ship or crew. Players can return to beacons, but each jump uses fuel and allows the rebel fleet to advance, gradually taking control of more beacons. Once a beacon is taken over, visiting it will trigger a fight with a powerful rebel fighter, offering only one unit of fuel if the player wins. In later sectors, enemies are stronger and have better weapons, but defeating them provides greater rewards.
There are eight species of crew in the game: Humans, Engi, Zoltan, Mantis, Rock, Slug, Lanius, and Crystal. Players can recruit these crew members or find them on enemy ships. Each species has unique strengths and weaknesses based on their biology. For example, Rock crew members are immune to fire and have high health, but move more slowly, making it harder to respond to emergencies. Zoltan crew members have lower health but provide extra energy to rooms they are assigned to and damage enemies when they die.
Waypoints may contain stores (offering systems, crew, weapons, and resources for scrap), distress calls, hostile ships, or other events. Hostile ships often attack the player, forcing combat. During battles, the game becomes a real-time space combat simulator, allowing the player to pause to make decisions.
During combat, the player can manage the ship’s systems by distributing power, assigning crew to stations, and firing weapons. Damage from attacks can disable systems, cause hull breaches that release air into space, start fires that spread and damage the ship, or reduce hull points. A ship is destroyed when its hull points reach zero or when all crew members are eliminated. Winning a battle gives resources for trading or upgrading the ship, while losing results in game failure, deleting the save file and requiring the player to restart. Players may avoid combat by jumping to another beacon once the ship’s engines are charged, or hostile ships may attempt to escape.
The game begins with one ship, the Kestrel cruiser in its default "A" configuration. Nine additional ships (one for each non-human species and two Federation ships) are unlocked by completing optional objectives. All ships have two layouts (except Crystal and Lanius, which have one) with different designs, equipment, and crew, unlocked by completing specific tasks. Each ship and layout focuses on different gameplay aspects, such as cloaking, boarding, or drone systems. The game includes achievements with no effect on gameplay and allows users to modify ship configurations.
Development
FTL was created by the two-person team Subset Games, which includes Matthew Davis and Jay Ma. Both worked at 2K Games' Shanghai studio and became friends while playing board games during their free time. Jay Ma, who had many skills, felt unhappy working in a large studio. After attending the 2011 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and seeing the Independent Games Festival, she decided to become an independent developer. Matthew Davis left 2K Games in early 2011, traveled through China, and later joined Jay Ma, who had also quit her job. Together, they began working on the core FTL game. They planned to spend one year on development and, if their efforts failed, would move on to other projects. After the game's success, they started working on their second game, Into the Breach.
The idea for FTL was inspired by tabletop board games like Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, a 2005 space roguelite game called Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, and video games such as Star Wars: X-Wing, where players manage systems by routing power. Davis also said TV shows and films like Star Trek, Firefly, and Star Wars influenced the game. Unlike most space combat games, the original idea was for the player to be a captain, not a pilot, to make the player feel like "Captain Picard yelling at engineers to get the shields back online," as Ma described. The game was designed to feel like a "suicide mission," with a 10% chance of winning. They studied Super Meat Boy as an example of a challenging but fair game, ensuring players could restart easily after failure. Each loss was meant to teach players lessons about battles and when to avoid fights. Permadeath, or permanent death of characters, was a key feature to emphasize the stakes of mistakes.
Early versions of the game used simple art to focus on gameplay. This helped players imagine the characters and situations the graphics could not show. After about six months of work, they began focusing on the game's art as they prepared to submit FTL to the Independent Games Festival in China in August 2011. The game was named a finalist at the IGF China competition, leading to media attention. PC Gamer magazine previewed the game, increasing interest before the 2012 Game Developers Conference. OnLive, a cloud-based gaming service, included FTL and other IGF finalists around the conference. At the Festival, FTL was nominated for the Grand Prize and the Excellent in Design award, which helped raise its profile. Davis said the competitions kept development on track because judges and reporters expected playable prototypes. Even if not nominated, being part of these events helped the public learn about FTL.
Subset Games initially planned to work on the game for about three months after saving enough money to cover a year of expenses. Increased attention on the game forced them to extend development, making it a two-year project. To fund the final polish and release, they turned to Kickstarter, aiming to raise $10,000. Their campaign was well-timed, following the success of the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter in March 2012. Top developers like Ken Levine and Markus Persson supported the effort, helping Subset raise over $200,000. FTL became one of the first games to benefit from crowdfunding, showing how such funding can support game development.
With more money, Subset Games added features while slightly delaying the release by one month. They used remaining funds for future projects and to pay for software tools that improved the game's performance. They also hired outside help, such as Tom Jubert for writing and world design, and Ben Prunty for music. Prunty was introduced through a mutual friend and had already created some music tracks before the Kickstarter. With the campaign's success, Subset paid for a full soundtrack. Prunty designed an interactive soundtrack that changed based on whether the player was in battle or exploring. Both versions of each song played at the same time, with the game switching between them based on action.
A top tier of the Kickstarter campaign allowed contributors to help design a new species for the game. One supporter helped create the Crystal.
FTL: Advanced Edition added new events, ships, equipment, and features to the original game. It was released for free to existing players on April 3, 2014, and as a separate version for iPad devices, with possible future support for other mobile systems. Chris Avellone was a special guest writer on the project.
New playable species, such as the Lanius—metallic lifeforms that lower oxygen levels in rooms—were introduced. Other additions included a clone bay (a place to create clones of dead crew members with skill penalties), hacking drones targeting enemy systems, a mind control system, a pulsar hazard that disables ship systems, and battery systems for short power bursts. New features also included a ship, a third layout for eight of the ten ships, new weapons, beacon encounters, and a new sector. A Hard difficulty mode was added. All new content can be turned off if preferred.
The team considered releasing the Advanced Edition on the PlayStation Vita, which would support touch controls, but decided against it due to the system's screen size.
Reception
FTL received mostly positive reviews. Many people praised the game for being engaging and for letting players imagine they are captains of spaceships. The game’s style and setting have been compared to science fiction works. Ben Kuchera of Penny Arcade Report said FTL is like "Firefly by way of the roguelike genre," while others compared it to Star Trek and Star Wars.
PC Gamer gave FTL its Short-form Game of the Year award for 2012. The game won "Excellence in Design" and the "Audience Award," and was a finalist for the "Seumas McNally Grand Prize" at the 15th Annual Independent Games Festival. It was also named the "Best Debut" title at the 2013 Game Developers Choice Awards. At the 2014 National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) awards, FTL was nominated for Game, Strategy (Jay Ma, Matthew Davis) and Game Engineering (Matthew Davis). During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated FTL for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year." Forbes listed both Jay Ma and Matthew Davis in its 2013 "30 Under 30" list for their success with FTL.
While most reviews were positive, some critics said the game was too difficult. Sparky Clarkson of GameCritics called FTL "absurdly, cruelly difficult." Edge magazine’s staff praised the game but noted it could sometimes be very challenging.
The iPad version of FTL: Advanced Edition was praised for its easy-to-use touch controls, which work well on the device. This version received universal acclaim, with a Metacritic score of 88/100 based on 17 reviews.
FTL, along with indie games like Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space (2005), Spelunky (2008), and The Binding of Isaac (2011), helped start the idea of "roguelite" games. These games use some features from classic roguelike games, such as randomly generated content and permanent loss of progress, along with other gameplay elements to make the game fun to play again and again.
The game’s soundtrack was nominated for Best Overall Music and Best PC Sound of 2012 by IGN. It was also listed among Kotaku’s Best Video Game Music of 2012, The Game Scouts’ Top Ten Video Game Soundtracks of 2012, and Complex magazine’s 25 Best Video Game Soundtracks on Bandcamp.