FTL: Faster Than Light

FTL: Faster Than Light
84
Metacritic
95
Steam
91.254
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$2.49
Release date
14 September 2012
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
95 (54 926 votes)
Recent
93 (341 votes)

This "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" allows you to take your ship and crew on an adventure through a randomly generated galaxy filled with glory and bitter defeat.

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FTL: Faster Than Light system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS:Windows XP / Vista / 7
  • Processor:2 GHz
  • Memory:1 GB RAM
  • Graphics:1280x720 minimum resolution, OpenGL 2.0 Support, and recommended dedicated graphics card with 128 MB of RAM
  • Hard Drive:175 MB HD space

Some integrated Intel HD graphics cards have been known to work but are not officially supported.

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
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Kusnier
Kusnier

In general I have enjoyed the game, however, my enjoyment has been spoiled by the overtuned difficulty of the final boss.

I have a lot of experience playing lots of roguelikes, both real-time and more the strategy-kind, and in general I'm pretty good at them.

However, the final boss in FTL has an absurd difficulty spike in comparison to the rest of the game.
You will spend an hour+ on the run, thinking everything's going great and then just get demolished by the final boss, completely ruining the enjoyment of the session.

My feedback would be to tone-down the final boss and make the rest of the game more difficult to compensate, as right now I just end up feeling cheated whenever I play.

Foxbat
Foxbat

FTL is a deceptively simple, addictive, fun, and, at times, frustrating little game. Just hopping in and playing the tutorial, you will master the basics in just a couple of hours of play. However, you will get absolutely wrecked the first time you meet the boss. Keep playing, experimenting, reading online guides (there are tons!) and you will actually start to beat the boss occasionally.
Replayability is excellent. Master the Easy mode? Bump it up to medium. Then add in advanced content. Master one ship class? Try another. The Stealth Cruiser, for example, plays completely differently than the Kestrel Cruiser.
I've played 225 hours and I still feel there are strategies I need to hone. Some games it will feel like you just get clocked by bad RNG. Winning is quite rewarding, however. Checking my stats, I have played 432 games and won 25.
Highly recommended.

bryanelliotsmith
bryanelliotsmith

I thought I was about to win, but took a halberd beam to the knee.

Brilliant game, addictive, hard to master and every run feels different.

Windows95
Windows95

It's very good and fun I've been playing since I was like 14 and never get bored. Glad to have it on steam too now

Spanan Rises
Spanan Rises

I think I only payed about five dollars for this game and it was worth every cent. very easy 10/10. why can i taste blood what do you mean i've only won three times

big thumbs up best game i've ever spent all my playtime losing

H3OFoxtrot
H3OFoxtrot

I had a lot of fun playing FTL. I was surprised with how much content and replayability it has. There is enough variety to keep you coming back. Definitely give it a try, it's well worth the price.

finland
finland

A bit of a steep learning curve at first, but you'll get used to it quick. FTL is a classic on steam, one of the games that everyone should just have in their library. Pick it up when it's like a dollar.

planet_jeroen
planet_jeroen

Beware, its a trap! First you get readjusted to start on easy, then you start wondering if this game is even beatable and when you finally get to sector 8 you get so exited that you will find yourself back with 3 crewmembers in sector 1.
It lasts all of about an hour or so, and the replay is quite high. Its basically a get to sector 8 puzzle with loads of dice rolls on events and resulting in a vastly different experience every go.

Gravemind1
Gravemind1

This game is incredible, RNG can be a bit of a bitsch, however if you do at any point get tired of vanilla... there is MOD SUPPORT.
I personally recommend Multiverse or Arsenal+
Multiverse is essentially a fan made sequel to FTL which is just awesome, while Arsenal just adds a buncha stuff to the original game.

This games music too.. if in any game, you stop playing and just listen to the music, you know damn well the music is good lol.
If you haven't bought this game, your doing it wrong.

Lord Ra
Lord Ra

Very addictive game, challenging achievements and new ships that prevent the game from getting stale and lets you clock hundreds of hours trying to collect all the achievements and ships.

Sieh
Sieh

Amazing game! Unforgiving at times but, that only makes it sweeter when you are able to CRUSH the evil flagship!

Canadian_Moose
Canadian_Moose

A simple yet addicting space ship strategy game that I keep going back to. I ironically find it to be more fun to play then their new game "into the breach"

Greenleaf
Greenleaf

This game is amazing, once you get bored with it install FTL Captains Edition and play for another 50 hours. Once you get bored with that install FTL: Multiverse and play for another 100+ hours. The community for this game has essentially made FTL 2.

BunnyScarletJerky
BunnyScarletJerky

FTL is an amazing with lots of replay value. However, the game is extremely difficult, and straight up unfair at times to the point you want to break your keyboard. Unless you are a massive masochist looking for a way to suffer, or extremely lucky, expect at least 40 losses before your first victory if you have no prior knowledge. Besides that, amazing game, would suffer again.

hodge-podge
hodge-podge

Can't believe I haven't reviewed this yet. even only at 30 hours this game is one of my favorites, not just for the core gameplay (which is an insanely good and only slightly rng-dependent strategy-type) but for everything from the way they build the world to the ost.

Plorthos
Plorthos

If you like Roguelikes, you'll love FTL. I, however, don't like them very much. I like having progression in my games, and aside from the handful of ships you can unlock there wasn't much for me to work towards. So I played the game for 10 hours or so before uninstalling and forgetting about it.

Several months ago I found myself with some free time and had heard a lot of good things about the Multiverse mod. I now have 200 hours in FTL (steam doesn't track playtime properly with the mod).

Multiverse completely overhauls the game, making it closer to a roguelite with a lot of meta progression (mainly through the 5 billion ships they have added). The story also got a huge rework, with deep lore, recurring unique characters, interesting quests and multiple endings. Many mechanics and weapons got added, significantly increasing complexity and the opportunity for crazy combos. The difficulty curve is also reworked so runs are less RNG dependant, though bad RNG can still end runs easily.

So I'd recommend FTL, solely because of Multiverse.

average zhin enjoyer
average zhin enjoyer

Excellent roguelike with incredible replayability, technical depth, strategy, and fun. I really enjoy it, plus there's a fairly active modding community.

Edward
Edward

203 hours of gameplay lost. Stupid thing reset all of my progress and then copied that reset over the steam cloud so there's no chance of getting it back.

gg mate.

Just_A_Spork
Just_A_Spork

extremely difficult and unforgiving for new time players, and every death is a chance to learn something new. (almost) every death can be chalked up to human error, with the occasional "RNGesus fucking hates me and everything I stand for"

you could say its the dark souls of top down rts rougelike space ship combat games.....

Apollo702
Apollo702

It probably isn't worth the aggravation. Sure, it is possible to eventually get good at it and have a chance at winning. It probably isn't worth it. The random factor is so large that IMO it just is more misery than fun to play.

Try it? Maybe. Expect a high misery factor.

Skotoboyna
Skotoboyna

If you don't have enough suffering in your life - play this game.
If you do, skip it.
10 random bullshit of 10

Narlex
Narlex

This game is solid and a huge time-sink of fun, albeit very hard. You won't be winning most rounds. The random events are interesting and everything generally flows well. It would be nice if the game had more variety in events or missions, but it's a solid package. Highly recommend. The only current issue is the game doesn't scale well and generally introduces blur without an option to force integer scaling. A separate product called Lossless Scaling is a valid way around this and almost a pre-requisite if you want a fullscreen experience 1080p+.

dave
dave

Brilliant, best game I've played in years and years, leaves so much up to the imagination in an old skool way, but has such depth of tactics and gameplay that the combination is magical - been playing it constantly over the last couple of weeks, and completed it with A, B and C types of the original ship, but each one was it's own journey of learning and discovery because the same tactics you've just honed don't work culminating it you wanting to keep going back. As there's another 8 or so ships to still check out I'm a bit worried about my work, relationship and health, but that's what the best games do - I feel like I've been transported back to being a kid, awesome!

Val
Val

You know what this game reminds me about?

It reminds me about playing D&D with bad DM.

You can understand how the game works mechanically, you might have read a few strategy guides or even came up with few tricks of your own, but there's nothing you could do about the game randomly deciding you'll have a boarding party of 4 Mantis or 3 Rocks early in the game, or a 3 shield 2 drone cruiser while you have virtually no offensive means to damage that yet.

The battles are pretty much about the initiative. You got initiative - you shut the enemy down and have an easy encounter - you conserve resources - you spend more on upgrades instead of repairs. You lose initiative - enemy shuts you down - you're having a hard time. If you don't completely steam roll your encounters then you're literally not doing well in your run. Hence in every fight I just pray the game doesn't randomly decide that a couple of my rockets will miss, or the enemy will target my weapon system.

Or even more subtle - you just didn't had enough lucky random encounters early in the game so you're behind on upgrades you're supposed to have to get through the later part of the run. This is why there's a restart button in the menu, and one will be very familiar with it after a while.

In most games the player would be given means to overcome the randomness with game knowledge, preparations and strategic thinking. Not in FTL. FTL will make it look like it does have all of that, but it's mostly a facade. The impact of what constitutes your "skill" has a rather low ceiling, and above and beyond that the dice still decides your fate.

freefalling45
freefalling45

Having to restart from 0 when dying, and not save points, during the game helped me get more comfortable with learning to accept the consequences of things I forgot to do, like forgetting to verify paths to the exit, spending all my scrap to acquire amazing weapons or stealth I could not also afford to purchase power for, thus, too early to use/utilize them, at the expense of shields now, which, with one random strong opponent, will get me killed, and getting comfortable maintaining my cool with one hit point left and winning battles like that, despite the pressure. I find it very fun to play while watching Star Trek. But don't get distracted! One mistake at the wrong time will make it impossible to succeed.

Ozrakami
Ozrakami

It has a lot of replay potential. There are a ton of options and the runs all feel different from the last.

Punderpowered
Punderpowered

There's a special place in my heart for this game. It's hard in a good way. It makes you think about your choices, and you care so much about the aliens with no backstory more than you would with most games.

I put most of my hours in this game on IOS, so my hours aren't going to reflect time spent, but this game is absolutely amazing. I first started playing it at a low point in my life and it really did (not joking) help me to rediscover my own ability to be creative, take things as they come, and work with what I have. It does this while being absurdly charming and an amazing story despite it's simplicity.

Buy this game.

Softercloth
Softercloth

Great game even better with mods. If you already have sunk a few hours into the game like I have recommend installing the Multiverse mod. Quintuples the game size and then some.

Warfighter
Warfighter

This game is a very fun sci-fi game and its one of the ones where you're constantly getting beaten with exponentially increasing sizes of sticks. I have yet to defeat the final enemy, and yet I still love this game.

j_thaxton
j_thaxton

Roguelike at it's finest, always a good time. Definitely a bit of a skill curve, but rewarding when you find yourself on the upward side of it

Dr Stun
Dr Stun

One of best games i played. I return to it regularly, just to remind myself how much fun is it :)

Lord Von Carrot
Lord Von Carrot

haha, dying go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Umah
Umah

awesomesauce awesomesauceawesomesauceawesomesauceawesomesauceawesomesauceawesomesauceawesomesauceawesomesauceawesomesauce

Snippity Snap
Snippity Snap

A good strategy game with some damn bangers

Raygor
Raygor

"Don't worry, I have very strong doors."

Aesthetically speaking, FTL ranks among my all-time favorites for Sci-Fi style games. The music is stellar, the races are fun, and the ship designs are varied and interesting. As a game, FTL is a rogue-like through and through, and can take many runs to get the hang of the core gameplay loops. While the combat can be engaging and fun, the random events you encounter can sometimes be frustrating in how arbitrary their results are, with little way to gauge what sort of risk any one option might entail. Still, each run can lead to some incredible moments and stories, and ultimately I am left wanting to dive back in on a new run. Hard yet mesmerizing, this is definitely a game worth checking out.

mountinlodge
mountinlodge

I have closer to 750 hours in this game (offline mode). Best $2.49 I've spent, and that was back in 2011! This is the one game I always come back to. I've finally beaten everything this game has to offer on Hard difficulty, but I know I'll keep playing FTL for years to come!

crimsonfox
crimsonfox

Amazing! This game is absolutely true! I was abducted once and this is exactly what it's like!

Inshallah boys throw well
Inshallah boys…

Extremely well designed game. On first glance, it would look to have no campaigns and be repetitive adventure. But thats far from reality. Every weapon, every ship, every crew is unique and can be combined into unique strategies. No single strategy is OP. The map having RNG also lets the player be flexible to try out different builds if they don't get the best loot for their ships. Its one of the best games I come back to every year.

ELEPHANTS420
ELEPHANTS420

One of the best games I've ever player. It's also one of the few game's that I don't want to mod since I feel the game is already perfect!

NodivisionHWM
NodivisionHWM

Pretty sure this game is just called A Random Fire Happened and Now You'll Endlessly Cycle Crew In To Put It Out Until They Die, Game Over

cupo77
cupo77

Absolutely fantastic game mechanics one of my favourite games of all time. Only criticism being that it ends quite quickly

Venomthemad
Venomthemad

A calm relaxing trip to overthrow a federation. FTL is a spaceship rougelike that you never knew you needed until now.

SuperSynapse
SuperSynapse

Amazing strategy game. If you aren't pausing occasionally, and thinking about what you're doing and why. That may be why it's too hard ;)

Only thing that would be great is a custom mode where you can build your own ship