FTL - Faster than Light has been out for eleven days or so now. It's an indie game described by the makers as a "space roguelike-like". You take over command of a lonely, pretty crappy spaceship that is the last, best hope for peace. Well, victory at any rate. You possess crucial information (presumably, many Bothans died to bring it to you) that has to reach the last bastion of the struggling Federation at any cost - but the rebels know you have it, and they are right behind you. If you're going to make it through at all, it's by the skin of your teeth, adapting to rising challenges, improving your ship with systems and scrap left behind by defeated enemies, hidden caches, Federation sympathizers, random souls in need or whatever of the many secrets lie hidden in these unexplored sectors of space.

Why is it roguelike-like? First of all, it has permadeath - you don't get to reload or retry. Second, no two games are the same - there are always eight sectors, but their contents are largely random, though "themed" - you can fly through sectors mostly inhabited by civilians who try to stay out of the war, or controlled by the many alien races, or even by the rebels, or even just nebulas uncharted by anyone, and the "beacons" (the game's FTL drives travel from beacon to beacon, sort of like Babylon 5 jumpgates) contain places and events chosen from a rather large pool. Enemy ships have randomized weapon loadouts; even within the same sector, you can fight some that can barely harm you at all, and some that have just the right tools to completely mess your shit up.

It makes it all the more important to stay on top of the situation. Battles are fought in pausable real time; you can hit space bar to issue commands at any given moment, and unless you are the God of FTL you will do so frequently. Your ship has a number of main systems:

- Engines, which keep you moving; without the engines you can't flee from a battle or evade any incoming weapons.
- Shields, which can block incoming shots and recharge fairly quickly - but can be bypassed or deactivated by certain weapons, or simply overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemy lasers.
- Weapons, the system that manages your various turrets and launchers. Each individual weapon requires power rerouted through weapon control, but if weapon control is damaged, you will lose the ability to power some or all of your weapons systems.
- Life Support, which keeps your ship filled with precious oxygen. Lose Life support and your ship slowly becomes uninhabitable - repair it or, eventually, die.
- as well as various other, less absolutely, but still very crucial systems such as medbays, drone control or cloaking devices, and subsystems like sensors, remote door control or the helm, which don't require power, but are still extremely important (lose the helm, and you can't pilot the ship, becoming the easiest target for the enemy weapons imaginable!)

Keeping all systems powered at all times is usually a pipe dream, so you will often be faced with choices and manual rerouting to get that tiny sliver of energy to keep your last laser turret powered, or get maximum output from your engines to escape - after all, life support only becomes truly important when your guys start actually collapsing. Or maybe you just open the airlocks and vent the ship into space, depriving both fire and incoming invaders of precious oxygen. Just make sure your life support system stays working so you can get it back!

Lasers, ions, beams, rockets, bombs, invaders in all shapes and colors frequently fly about with straightforward graphics and sound effects, and usually you don't have one system that needs repairing, but five. Your crewmembers, potentially skilled in various roles and from one of seven diverse races including of course the ever-present human, will have to deal with them in various ways; manning stations, repairing damage, putting out fires, fighting other enemies with ray guns, claws and other weapons of choice, and occasionally staying put huddled together for dear life as your ship gets pelted by rockets all over and into every orifice imaginable. Even if that last ditch rocket, fired remotely as the weapons room is slowly burning to complete brokenness, manages to remove that last sliver of hull strength and leaves you victorious, that won't count for much if your own ship is beyond repair. On the other hand, it can all be worth it in the end. Survival always leave the option for eventual victory, or at least getting as far as you can.

You don't get time to build up your ship indefinitely - while you can cover a lot of beacons before the rebels force you to leave a sector (and should), you will try to gather as much scrap, fuel, missiles and other stuff (like additional crew members) as you can, on the go, upgrading and adding new systems as you can and need.

The randomness of game scenarios and the finality of death, both for your individual crew members and your own ship and its mission, makes your playthroughs memorable much in the same way as you remember that ADOM character who pulled off that one miraculous escape - or died that gruesome or valiant death. In the end you don't just fight for the ideals of the Federation, you fight for that one guy who fixed the life support at the last second so his crewmates might live, but asphyxiated just seconds later - or the heroic soul who sabotages the enemy ship to explosion as it's pounding you to a pulp - with no time to teleport him back out in time. Or that unlucky redshirt who was manning the engines as they were hit with a missile and set on fire, retreating to the medbay to heal only for it to get hit with a missile and set on fire, and finally settle in a remote spot of the ship with his last remaining three HP. Only to be hit by another missile.



The goal was to combine that special feel of roguelike games with permadeath - where very choice matters, and adaptability, caution and paranoia as well as strategic (which weapons to pick? Which systems to upgrade and keep powered?) and tactical aptitude (which weapons to aim at what, when, and which crew members to send to repair or man stations; at the same time possible directing your own boarding parties aboard the enemy ship) and a fairly healthy dose of plain old luck will determine your success. In my eyes, the creaters of Faster than Light have succeeded masterfully. Playing, winning and losing in this game feels the same and is just as addictive as ADOM, even if in a different intensity, since you don't invest as much time in your "character" the ship as you typically will in a regular ADOM game; it's more similar to Iron Man.

On the whole FTL is much easier to win than ADOM - but just as in ADOM, you will have to minimize mistakes and understand the combat system really well to succeed at all. It's just that FTL is not nearly as long and detailed; though still very much a deep and engaging experience.

Similar to how the ADOM races and classes offer very different experiences in the early game especially, Faster than Light offers eighteen different starting ships, vastly differing in starting crew and equipment, that you can unlock in various ways. Some of them break the mold significantly - you can play ships without shields, without sensors, with just one crew member and without weapons. Like in ADOM, even if you find the "Normal" playing experience to be too easy, you can give yourself certain restrictions, or work on one of the many achievements the game will gladly record for you.



The game costs ten dollars, and for the fun I've had with it, that's an absolute steal. For me, it's the only time a game that wasn't ADOM has made me feel the way I did when I played ADOM - in addition to letting me be a friggin' spaceship captain. I'm still far from unlocking every ship, too, so it's not the end of the road yet.

And that concludes this review. Incidentally - it's almost enchanting to read some of the posts in FTL's official forum. Many of the complaints raised against its randomness and unforgivingness and their rebuttals could just as well apply to any roguelike, including ADOM (and have been). As such, roguelike-like seems a fitting term.