Chaos and comedy. Death and rebirth. Luck and, uh, running out of luck. A good roguelike doesn't treat the player like other games do. Roguelikes won't guide you helpfully along a path, or let you cinematically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They're more likely to dangle you deep between the jaws of defeat and fumble the rope until you go sliding down defeat's hungry gullet. This is their beauty, and it's a part of why we keep coming back for another go. Next time everything will go right. Next time you'll find the right pair of poison-proof loafers, the perfect co-pilot for your spaceship, a stash of stronger, better ropes. Next time.
Here's our list of the 19 best roguelikes on PC you can play in 2024.
]]>Welcome to the latest edition of The RPS Time Capsule, where members of the RPS Treehouse each pick one game from a given year to save from extinction while all other games fizzle and die on the big digital griddle in the sky before blinking out of existence. This time, we're turning our preservation mitts on the year 2012, a year absolutely stacked with some pretty stellar releases. But which ones will make the cut and be safely ensconced inside our cosy capsule for future generations? Come on down to find out.
]]>Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
]]>Strategy games is an enormous genre in PC gaming, with real-time, turn-based, 4X and tactics games all flying the same flag to stake their claim as the one true best strategy game. Our list of the best strategy games on PC covers the lot of them. We like to take a broad view here at RPS, and every game listed below is something we firmly believe that you could love and play today. You'll find 30-year-old classics nestled right up against recent favourites here, so whether you're to the genre or want to dig deep for some hidden gems, we've got you covered. Here are our 50 best strategy games for 2023.
]]>Happy Star Wars: Squadrons day, internet. I have nothing to offer but the sneer of a veteran Elite Dangerous pilot. A disdainful scoff as you vroomify your engines in the docking bay, click-clacking your flight checks in the seat of some dusty Y-wing, some classless X-Wing, some bogus B-wing. Who do you think you are? Sitting there in the pilot’s seat of that garish tin can. Only an exponent of the foulest incorrectitudes would indulge a shipyard with all the basic-ass nomenclature of an episode of Sesame Street. Here, you fripperist, you child, gaze upon the true list of the 9 best spaceships in games.
]]>Every time I sit down to write, the first thing I do isn’t open up a blank document, it’s find some nice video game music to listen to. And loads of it can be found free on YouTube. Ambient music from Skyrim, relaxing compilations from Animal Crossing, lo-fi Legend of Zelda remixes Sometimes, work or study just can’t get done without my 10-hour loop of Chrono Trigger’s Corridors Of Time.
Looking at the millions of comments, uploads, and views these uploads get, it’s clear that I’m not alone. If you’re reading this on a PC right now, there’s a statistically decent chance that YouTube is currently open and playing some video game tunes in another tab. And it’s only possible because YouTube doesn’t treat video game music as it does other popular music.
]]>Video games are great at transporting us to different worlds, but none capture that feeling quite so perfectly as intergalactic space games - and 2023 looks set to be one of the biggest years for space games yet, with the launch of Starfield, Homeworld 3 and more all on the horizon. But what games have gone before them and staked their claim already on the dusty planet surface known as 'Best Space Games'? We reveal all below, with our carefully curated list of all the best space games you can play on PC right now. Whether you're a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there's a space game for you.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>The folks at Subset Games are responsible for the games FTL and its follow-up Into The Breach, which means that they are also responsible for some of the most frustrating yells I've done alone on an airplane. I'm sorry to those around me, but I thought I was going to finally complete a run and then everyone I loved exploded or died from lack of oxygen or fell into the ocean. I assume Subset Games has been responsible for similar micro-aggressions against many of you. Which is why Adam Smith from RPS held them to the fire (a pleasant conversation) at Rezzed yesterday.
]]>The howling vortex of hypercapitalism that is Christmas may be behind us, but judging from the amount of snow outside my window, it's still the season to be Santa-esque. Not to be one-upped by GOG and Humble, Steam are now offering a free copy of FTL with every purchase of the fantastic Into The Breach, a drum-tight tactical puzzle that has captured the hearts, minds and other less vital organs of several of RPS's writers.
Better still, this deal is fully retroactive, if you've already picked up the game, and if you already own FTL on Steam you'll find a giftable copy in your inventory to share with someone. Within, we have some handy tips on how to pick who in your life to share it with.
]]>This is perhaps a slightly perverse offer, seeing as so many folks who have been jonesing for Into The Breach have the jitters and the sweats specifically because it's the follow-up to the revered FTL.
However, if you've managed to come to this backwards, i.e. got all hot'n'bothered about Into The Breach's ultra-deft, ultra-lean apocalyptic turn-based strategy without ever having played its brutal star-trekking predecessor FTL, good news! If you buy Into The Breach via Humble or GOG (and the former delivers you a Steam key, FYI), you'll get a free copy of FTL.
]]>Look not to what high-speed, turn-based, sci-fi strategy wonder Into The Breach shares with its timeless predecessor FTL: Faster Than Light, but instead to how aggressively different it is. Though they share a soul of permadeath and moment-to-moment dilemmas, entire limbs have been lopped off and casually thrown aside, teeth and hair uprooted and plugged back in at strange new angles, eyeballs moved to places that were never designed to have eyeballs. Not in merely superficial ways either. It has moved from space-bound chaos to ground-based decisions, from spaceship crew management to mech vs horror-bug warfare, even from real-time to turn-based combat.
Yet the really startling change is that, unlike FTL, Into The Breach is rarely a game of chance, of random, cruel loss or sudden fortune, but instead is almost pathologically fair, even if it often doesn't feel like it. There is no calamity here that cannot be traced back to your own actions. In other words, you've only got yourself to blame for the total wipeout of humanity. But this particular end of the world is a glorious one, and one I will happily keep experiencing for years to come.
]]>'FTL but on a...' is a formula that sounds like it can just keep on giving, but it's entirely telling that the creators of FTL have moved onto whip-smart micro-turn-based strategy instead of more ship management-based roguelitery. People keep making these things - on a train! on a post-apocalyptic battlebus! also on a spaceship! also on a post-apocalyptic battlebus! - but I can count the real successes on one hand.
Sadly, it seems I won't be grafting an extra finger with 'Abandon Ship' carved into it onto that hand - not unless this Cthulhu vs pirates take on the vehicular surviv-o-RPG format can perform some serious course-correction during its voyage through early access.
]]>For the past couple of months, we've been bragging shamelessly about how we've already got beta copies of Into The Breach, the XCOM vs Pacific Rim vs Advance Wars-y follow-up to the timeless FTL: Faster Than Light. This ugly crowing has an expiration date, you'll be glad to hear - and that date is the end of this very month.
]]>What Works And Why is a new monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game and analyses what makes it good.
I love Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and Dishonored 2, and the name for these games is dumb: they're 'immersive sims'. If you asked me what I liked about them, my answer would be a phrase almost as dumb: 'emergent gameplay!'
I always used to think of these as virtually the same thing, but of course they're not. Immersive sims usually have a whole list of traits, things like:
]]>It's that time again already - 2018's Independent Games Festival hands out its best-in-indie gongs on March 21 (as part of the Game Developers Conference), and these are the games in line for a prize. And, more importantly, a big shot at success thanks to the profile, although it should be noted that a fair few of these have done rather well for themselves already.
Scooping the most nods at 4 is veritable brain-frying, rule-rewriting puzzler Baba Is You, while the singular, surreal climbing game Getting Over It... With Bennett Foddy and charming, cups-on-ears narrative adventure Night In The Woods both boast a respectable three, followed by FTL follow-up Into The Breach with 2. There are many more lovely, lovely things on the full list of finalists below.
]]>With apologies about continued teasing you with something you can't have quite yet, I wanted to follow-up our recent chat about the stressful wonders of FTL follow-up Into The Breach with an after-action report. This takes you through how the game actually works, and demonstrates the kinds of decisions, sacrifices and face-palming involved in every moment of it.
]]>Any studio with a debut as strong as FTL might well be wary of that Difficult Second Album syndrome. How do you follow up a game so idiosyncratic and widely adored without risking disappointment? The answer, it turns out, is with a kaiju vs giant mech tactical masterclass.
We’ve been playing Into the Breach.
]]>Cowardice is a virtue. So says the team on this week's RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. That's because our theme is "running away" - games that encourage you to flee from danger, or that give you a choice between fight and flight. Adam will run from the soldiers of Arma or the post-apocalyptic antagonists of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Brendan will scarper from poor odds in For Honor or Overwatch, while Alice only pretends to run away in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, tricking her foes into giving chase before ambushing them like some kind of velociraptor.
]]>Within a couple of minutes of sitting down with Justin Ma and a build of his new game, Into the Breach [official site], preconceptions are torn to shreds. Ma is one half of the team behind FTL and when Into the Breach was announced, I wasn’t alone in thinking it looked like tactical skirmisher Advance Wars, with added monsters. It is that game, to an extent, but its most notable feature isn’t tied to the setting at all - it’s that this is a tactical combat game in which the enemy is entirely predictable. Everything is explained below, but in short, this might be the smartest turn-based design I've seen since Invisible, Inc.
]]>The creators of FTL have announced their next game, Into the Breach [official site], and it looks a bit like the isometric, tactical version of EDF I've always wanted. Tasked with defending the last remnants of humanity from giant monsters, you'll protect cities and fight monsters in randomly generated turn-based scenarios. It looks gorgeous, as you can see in the trailer below, and will have a new soundtrack by Ben Prunty, FTL's composer, as well as writing and world-building from the keyboard of Chris Avellone.
]]>When we reviewed Tempest, a game of piracy in a fantasy setting, I came away saddened that it was all grinding turns and cannon aiming, with crew management that wasn’t very personable or fun. “Why has nobody successfully transferred the shipboard panic of FTL or the crew management of XCOM to a wooden frigate on the high seas?” I lamented. “Maybe in the future, some developer will plunder those design lessons.”
Well, shiver my timbers, it looks like Abandon Ship [official site] wants to do just that.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
FTL is a Star Trek episode generator. You are in control of the crew of a spaceship and forced to race across the galaxy. Each new system visited brings with it drama, tough choices, high comedy, and the very high possibility of death. It's thrilling.
]]>Mark Johnson is the developer of Ultima Ratio Regum [official site], an ANSI 4X roguelike in which the use of procedural generation extends beyond the creation of landscapes and dungeons to also dynamically create cultures, practices, social norms, rituals, beliefs, concepts, and myths. This is the final in a four part series examining what generating this kind of social detail can bring to games.
In this series so far we’ve examined the current state of procedural generation (PCG) in game design and outlined what a greater engagement with 'qualitative' PCG might bring to games (in Part 1), talked through in detail the process for creating a richly detailed PCG element of social life (in Part 2) and given an overview of my own work in this area (in Part 3). For this final part we will now zoom out somewhat and talk about game design and the games industry as a whole, and where we might want to position qualitative PCG more broadly, both now and in the near future. There are two core propositions I’d like to put forward: firstly, that we should regard qualitative worldbuilding detail as being integral to the future of games, instead of an intriguing aside; and secondly, that the demographics of developers and players of PCG games are going to shape the direction that procedural generation evolves in.
]]>PAGE ONE, PANEL ONE
Graham lies in a crumpled heap beneath the looming figure of DOCTOR NO IDEAS.
CAPTION: This looks like a job for…
PAGE ONE, PANEL TWO
Pip, dressed in a (heroic) frog costume, sits typing at a computer.
PAGE TWO, PANEL ONE
A closeup of a Gchat window with the text "G, are there any games which do violence as well as comics?"
]]>Hello there, best keep your distance, for I am ill. Not just 'bit of a sniffle/put a bigger pullover on, you great ninny' ill, but 'noxious substances violently erupting from everywhere' ill. My daughter started going to nursery about three months ago, and has been bringing back a delightful cocktail of viruses and bacteria ever since - it's been a relentless assault on my immune system, and while I'm oddly proud of how long it stood against this microbial siege, it has now collapsed in gruesome style.
It's OK, I don't want your pity. Unless it's a special magical form of pity that renders me instantly able to eat again. I want to talk about games.
]]>I'm a broken man today, having been up til nearly 2am playing the freebie 'Advanced Edition' expansion for impeccably clever/brutal space survival sim/strategy/RPG FTL: Faster Than Light last night, so I guess it's safe to say the new features haven't broken the old spell. I had worried the various new weapons, rooms and encounters would upset FTL's simultaneously delicate and chaotic balancing act, but in four run-throughs (three failed, once successful #humblebrag) I haven't felt its famed cruelty ever collapsed into either messy excess or over-complication. In one game, I lost because the enemy kept teleporting over a stream of invading clones. Another I won thanks to an excellent new weapon. All's fair in love and murderous rebel space fleets.
Thoughts and a video (with commentary, or something approximating it) below.
]]>Are you ready to have even more of your life sucked away by FTL's infinite, endlessly twisting black hole of finely calibrated systems? Then you are in luck, person with an improbable amount of time on your hands, because FTL: Advanced Edition is just around the corner. Or rather, the space equivalent of a corner. There are not a lot of corners in space.
]]>No release date for the free FTL 'Advanced Edition' addon as yet, which makes me an even sadder boy than I already was. Especially in the wake of the new Clone Bay subsystem being revealed.
"The goal of the Clone Bay was to really disrupt the core way you play the game," the devs have explained. "You’ll be able to send crew off into dangerous situations without fear of death. Giant alien spiders will no longer be the terrifying, unstoppable force that you’re used to, since the system can simply revive your crew after the event."
"Giant alien spiders will no longer be... terrifying" is a bold claim, isn't it?
]]>We reported last month about FTL's free, Chris Avellone-penned expansion, but now we know more about exactly what it contains. In a post over on the FTL site, the team introduce a new race of "metallic lifeforms" called The Lanius.
Just when I thought I had enough ways to get all my friends killed.
]]>I'm beginning to think there's some kind of conspiracy to have Torment/Project Eternity/Wasteland 2/Every Classic RPG You Can Think Of story megamind Chris Avellone write everything. It's only a matter of time until we're all glorified flesh puppets for his dialogue. I'm not even sure what I'm writing right now is my own. Avellone could already be pulling the strings, plucking away at my thoughts as though a master of mind-controlling bluegrass banjo. Nah, that's crazy. Surely it'd be more eviden-- BUY FTL BUY FTL BUY FTL IT'S GETTING AN EXPANSION WRITTEN BY CHRIS "SEX-LYMPICS CHAMPION" AVELLONE YEAH.
]]>It's not Android games, nor soundtracks, nor books about kettles. The new Humble Bundle is the original, the Humble Indie Bundle 9. And for a ninth time in a row, it's a corker. With names like Mark Of The Ninja, FTL: Faster Than Light, and FEZ, you can see the dollar signs spinning already.
]]>BUY VIDEOGAMES BUY ALL THE VIDEOGAMES BUY THEM FOREVER...
...is what someone who works at videogame download service might say. I don't work at one of those, so I don't really know why I'm saying it. I suppose I'm generally in favour of the buying of videogames, however. I'm also in favour of videogames being affordable, so the last gasp of mad discounting in the current GoG Summer Sale prompts me to raise a grubby thumb in approval. You've around 20 hours left to obtain the likes of The Witcher 2, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Dungeon Keeper, Retro City Rampage and Syndicate for $cheap.
]]>If gathering friends to play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator is a bit cumbersome, and if you find FTL a bit lonely, then I've found the perfect game for you. Final Frontier is the result of a nasty transporter accident between the pair, where the Heisenberg compensators decoupled and they arrived on the SS GMOD screaming and inside out. The sick bay did its best, but all it could do is stabilise the life signs. To be honest, the gristly lump that was spat out looks pretty amazing.
]]>Disclaimer: I am a backer of Infinite Space 3: Sea Of Stars. Do I need to disclaim that? It's not like I'm an investor. I just gave them money to make a game I wanted to play, and I only backed at the lowest tier. If anything, I was making an investment in me. I pre-ordered happiness. Disclaimer: I am an investor in Craig, and Craig is well happy at seeing the first glimpse of Infinite Space 3: Sea Of Stars. Digital Eel's third entry in their farcical space roguelike series is making the transition from a top-down 2D adventure, to bulbous and spacious 3D. There's a roomy video below.
]]>....Cart Life, which scooped up an an impressive triple-whammy of Nuovo Award, Excellence in Narrative and the coveted Seamus McNally Grand Prize at last night's Independent Games Festival 2013 awards. The warmest of all congratulations to Richard Hofmeier, whose affecting, brave game is well overdue for this kind of attention.
]]>Things that would happen in the best of all possible worlds:
- Cats would empty their own litter trays - Israel and Palestine would mutually agree "screw it, let's have a fancy dress party instead" - People would read the article before commenting - McVities would bring back Marmite-flavoured Mini Cheddars - LEGO approves and manufactures this proposed FTL building set
]]>Music man David Valjalo follows-up his exploration of the big-budget orchestral soundtracks in the mainstream games industry with a look at the other end of the scale - the super-low-budget, ultra-catchy, sometimes kitschy scores of indie darlings. He rounds up the men behind Hotline Miami, Sweden-based Dennis Wedin and Jonatan Soderstrom, two of the soundtrack artists they hand-picked, US artists M.O.O.N. and Scattle, and FTL composer Ben Prunty, to get the scoop on making music for small games and, quite often, small change.
]]>That headline doesn't refer to the times when games break and throw up oddball bugs for our amusement, but rather when games throw so many problems at the player that they become a sort of jeopardy-based experience in crisis-juggling. Earlier today I was running through my game collection and thinking about what I might like to play. It wasn't Dishonored. Three things other stood out: Day Z, FTL, and X-Com. I began to think about what those had in common which, and what that said about my enjoyment of this year's immersive masterpiece.
And I realised it was this: peril.
]]>These were the voyages of the Starship Moggy. Its eight-sector mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new weapons and new system upgrades, to boldly go somewhere no-one has come back alive from before (apart from save-scummers).
Sector 8. The end of the line.
]]>And so my FTL campaign, the flight of the starship Moggy, limps to the game's penultimate sector. It seems impossible that we're still alive at this point - let alone that we now have seven crew, three guns and NO-ONE IS DEAD. The looming question is whether or not we're anything like equipped for the final showdown in Sector 8 - but then again it's foolish to go asking that before we've survived Sector 7.
Ah, we're in the Engi sector. Home, in a sense. I have four Engi on my crew, we're in an Engi ship and we're attacked by roaming Engi a whole lot less than by any other species. Home. But better not get too comfortable.
]]>I'm feeling pretty good, which is exactly the sort of thing one should never say in FTL. Doom, disaster and dismay inevitably looms, but having pulled my ship and my crew back from the brink of disaster at least I've got a war story out of it. Now, let's see what's out there in Sector 6 - this needs to go well, as I'm now just two sectors away from the final f(l)ight - presuming I survive that long.
]]>Previously. Now:
Crew: 5 Shields: 3 Guns: 2 (only one of which can be used at once) Fuel: 5 Hull: 1% Scrap: 2 Location: Parked outside the exit from Sector 4 Situation: desperate
]]>Continuing my FTL journey into the heart of doomed space-darkness. Read the earlier installments here.
Jump 1
A new sector! We're down to 25% hull, still don't have a proper gun and have spent all our money on repairs that didn't last long. Damn, we're in a tight spot. So do we exercise extreme caution or take big gambles in the hope of big pay-offs?
Here's the first dilemma. We run into some rebels, who miraculously don't attack us on sight. Wusses. Shall I demand surrender of their goods? You never know, maybe they'll be afraid of men called Steven and just cough up without a fight.
]]>With two sectors survived, things don't look to good for the good ship Moggy, crewed by two Engis and a human named after cats I have known. The hull's taken a beating, we've almost no cash and we don't yet have any upgrades to speak of. Meantime, our enemies forever snap at our heels, and the challenges we'll face in this next, Zoltan-ruled sector will likely be stiffer than that we've yet faced. Anything could happen, though. After all, space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. It might even be big enough that I'll find a gun in it somewhere. Oh, please dear lord let me find a gun.
]]>Continuing my imperilled escapades in spaceship sim/roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light. With a crew named after cats I have know, I've survived the first sector but at the expense of 50% of my starship's hull and I have no meaningful upgrades. No-one is dead, though. Repeat: no-one is dead. I'm going to keep on saying that, because it's the only thing I've possibly got to brag about here.
]]>FTL: Faster Than Light is the spaceship management/roguelike hybrid that everyone in the world is playing right now, living and reliving endless numbers of doomed space crusades, disastrous journeys and euphoric tales. There are eight million stories in the naked universe. This will be just one of them.
These are the voyages of the starship Moggy, crewed by a brave band of humans and aliens named after cats that I have known. This was an egregious mistake, as seeing my childhood pets burned, asphyxiated and lasered to death almost immediately proved traumatic. Still, we exist not merely within a universe, but a multiverse. One crew of feline-named space travellers might meet their tragic doom, but perhaps, in a parallel existence, another band of desperate starfarers might just have succeeded... (Of course they didn't. This is FTL. But the multiverse does at least allow for the story to be told anew).
]]>FTL is out today! At long last. I reckon there'll be a fair few people reading this who are about to receive their first Kickstarted game and that's quite exciting, as is FTL itself. I've already shared some of my thoughts on the beta version but it does seem as if I'd been drinking vinegar that day. Skimming back through my words, I don't seem quite as enthused as I actually am about the game's finer points. When fires rage and crew members panic from room to room, FTL is a delicious brew, random elements combining to create a heady commingling of anxiety and roleplay. It's a new form of ARPG. Available direct from the developers, on GOG and Steam shortly.
]]>Last week Adam posted some impressions of the spaceship managing FTL, and you're allowed to read them. And now, Craig's spoken with its creators, Justin Ma and Matthew Davis. They talk about how the project came to be, how they're still in shock over their massive Kickstarter success, and how it was that the game was inspired by text adventures.
]]>FTL didn't just have a successful Kickstarter, it was stratospheric. Having asked for enough to finish off their roguelike spaceship sim, the two person development team received enough mony to build an actual interstellar vessel. Thankfully, they stuck around on Earth long enough to finish off the game, which should be out next month. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on the beta.
]]>Awesome-looking spaceship-managing rogue-like type FTL: Faster Than Light, is going to get a beta later this month, according to Mr Jubert speaking to BluesNews. You'll recall that the game did extraordinarily well over on the Kickstarters, raising an extra special $200k when they were only asking for $10k. Really, Internet, you do spoil us.
New video below!
]]>With Legend Of Grimrock coming up soon, my thoughts turned back to the original Dungeon Master. Released in 1987, a year I mostly spent aged 9, it was for me one of the most defining games of my childhood. Smart, enormous, and terrifying, it was such a stride forward for gaming. But I was pretty certain getting it working on a Windows 7 box was going to be something of a fiddly nightmare. Not so!
]]>I am sad. The updated version of space-faring roguelike FTL the developers are showing off in their beta video series is a few steps beyond the IGF version I have on my PC. So, yeah, you might like what you're seeing and want to play it, but take a moment to think about what it's like to be me? To see a better version of a game I own, but can't have yet. I will accept your pity. I'm about to throw a massive, over-entitled strop. Hnng. HNNG. No, I can't stay mad at them. Not after this video shows what they're adding to the game: new ship designs, stealth elements, and NPCs to fix fires. Also: fire beams to start fires.
]]>You can't spell 'futile' without 'FTL', and demonstrating randomly generated and bastardly tough space roguelike FTL without flicking some special developer switches seems, to me, the very definition of it. But the FTL devs are brave space types, venturing into the depths of their wonderful space-ship management sim to show off the new additions. Their 1000% Kickstarter funded indie game was already amazing, but they're mining those Star Trek tropes for all they're worth: they've added cloaking and teleporting. "Captain, we have an incoming message from YouTube." "Onscreen, Lieutenant Sexington."
]]>Every fantasy you've ever had to reroute power to the shields exists in FTL. I know because I just pulled power from the sick-bay to boost my shields while I attempted to flee a hostile enemy scout. If you don't have those fantasies yet, then soon it'll be all you can think about. FTL's random, rogue-like space-faring nastiness just got me into an unwinnable fight against an unmanned scout ship: if I destroyed it, it would automatically send out a distress signal to inform the rest fleet that I'd just Captain Mal-led him. So instead of going for a death blow, I had to stoke the shields and retaliate by hitting their weapons, keeping us both alive while my FTL drives powered up. No-one was hurt so far; the sick-bay was expendable. Recuperation would have to happen post-battle.
]]>Onlive and the IGF are spooning for a fortnight. The sensual lovers are celebrating the Indie Gaming New Year by giving you access to 30 minute demos of 16 IGF finalists. The alphabetically sexy list of games is: Atom Zombie Smasher, Be Good, Botanicula, Dear Esther, Dustforce, English Country Tune, Frozen Synapse, FTL, Lume, Nitronic Rush, Once Upon a Spacetime, POP, SpaceChem, To the Moon, Toren, and WAY.
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