Fire up the Shield Systems, It’s a Faster than Light Review! (PC)

Faster than Light is a 2D space strategy/simulation/roguelike game which was developed by Subset Games and Is available for Windows, MAC and Linux. You can buy it directly on the developer’s website, on Steam or GOG.

Faster than Light is a bit of a unique space strategy experience, you play the role of a captain of a ship which is running away from the rebel fleet, your ship contains the weakness to the rebel fleet that is vital if there is any hope of saving the Federation. In order to deliver this information, you must travel through the various sectors of the universe, each of which are under the control of one of the various alien species.

Your adventure is randomized each time, with different quests, enemies, and sectors that make sure no two adventures are exactly alike, which is quite nice. There’s also a fair bit of dialogue choices that you are presented with throughout each game, things like choosing to ignore civilians that are being attacked by pirates can have a negative impact on your adventure later, but sometimes even can be necessary depending on how beat up your ship is.

If you’re going by graphical fidelity then this game isn’t the greatest as it’s fairly pixelated, but if you instead choose to see the game for what it is and look more at the art style then the game is great. It has a charming feel to it, definitely what is expected of an indie game. They didn’t have the budget of an AAA title to spend on graphical fidelity, but what they have done is great, and definitely creates a nice atmosphere for the game. (When I say nice, I don’t mean happy, but I do mean good).

As for audio quality, the game is also quite nice in this area, it has an absolutely AWESOME soundtrack that creates a very space adventure-like feel to the game itself, which is a great thing indeed. If you buy the game on Steam or on the developer’s website you also get a download of the soundtrack, and my goodness would it be worth it to download the soundtrack, it makes quite the immersive experience and is just a joy to listen to.

Back to the gameplay side of things, the game simply dominates here as well. You won’t get tired of piloting the same old ship time and time again, as there’s 9 ships you can use, and each ship has an alternate mode that completely changes the way you use the ship, so there’s plenty of variety in how you can play. If you want to play as the stealth ship and use the cloak to turn invisible during battles, you can do that. If you want to play as the Zoltan ship and have the super shield which can buy you some time while you charge your weapons, you can do that. If you’d prefer to play as a ship which focuses on teleporting your boarding party aboard, you can do that as well. The ship you’re using along with the systems and weapons you have installed on the ship even alters the dialogue, in many cases there is a blue option which is available if you have the necessary equipment; using your cloaking system to sneak away instead of simply trying to remain concealed or taking on a rebel ship in a fight, or sending in one of your rock crew (invulnerable to fire) to go put out a fire on a civilian space station are some examples of those options. They’re better than the normal ones you have available to you, so there are advantages in coming across certain situations in certain ships or ship configurations.

The only disadvantage to how you can use ships is that In the beginning you can only play as the first one, and you must acquire new ones either by unlocking them via quests or events on your playthrough, or unlocking the alternate form of a ship that you already have by completing 2/3 achievements that you can do while playing as each ship. Some of the quests are dependent on how your game’s map was generated that time, which sucks as sometimes you may not be able to complete an event to unlock a ship if your galaxy didn’t generate the correct way.

Other than some small issues like that though, Faster than Light is a complete joy to play, the neat story combined with the awesome gameplay, charming visuals and neat soundtrack make for an awesome space simulation/roguelike experience. And when it’ll only run you ten dollars, how can you possibly afford not to buy this game?

Graphics 70   Audio 80   Gameplay 90 Creativity 80   Execution 90   Offset 90

8.3

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