I bought it today, and logged around 4 and half hours. I can't seem to put it down. Every death is heartbreaking, yet I want to try again immediately. I'm getting owned on easy, but I made it to the 8th sector and died before the boss once. Oh well.

If you haven't purchased this game yet and you're on the edge, do it. You will NOT regret it.

Yea, kept hearing about this and decided to take the plunge a couple of hours before the sales offer ended. And god damn, its addictive. I haven't beaten the game yet, even on Easy but despite that, you just wanna try again. Its about the journey, not the end and man, the journeys you get to be part of in this game are fantastic.

I haven't gotten the "It's WHAT time?" feeling in a long, long time and this game delivered.

Same here. When I finally logged out for the first time, Steam told me I had played this game for 8 hours straight. To which I replied : "What are you talking about, it's just... 5 IN THE MORNING ? WHAT THE HELL ?!"

@JamesJeux007 said:

Same here. When I finally logged out for the first time, Steam told me I had played this game for 8 hours straight. To which I replied : "What are you talking about, it's just... 5 IN THE MORNING ? WHAT THE HELL ?!"

Yea, you don't feel time passing at all. What I thought was an half an hour game turned out to be a 2 hour long session. You're too busy making sure the ship's not on fire & OH GOD THE DOOR SYSTEMS ARE DAMAGED AND I'M VENTING OXYGEN

Such hard swings in this game! Suddenly you have six crew in the second sector, and things are going great, then you stumble into a solar storm and a ship that sets your whole operation ablaze, and you´re swearing and panicing, and then it´s all over. Love it!

I bought this game on a whim, and then played it for 4 hours straight. It amazes me how, every time I start this game up, I must play for a minimum of 2 hours. I'm still getting owned on Easy, but I'll beat it eventually. I'm excited to start playing on normal when I finally do. I've come close, having taken on the final boss once. I took down his first form, but died in the second encounter. I probably could have one had I repaired first. Oh well.

Agreed!

If find myself, after logging off GW2 and going to bed, loading up the laptop for "just one round" then suddenly it's 2 or 3 hours later.

Between school GW, TF2: MvM and this I feel like I haven't slept in weeks... And god help me I plan on buying Torchlight 2 here soon.

@Jace: I can't wait to play it, too, man. Just waiting for the parts to my new PC.

What you're describing is totally the essence of a Rogue-like's appeal: high difficulty, high risk, no second chances, a fresh experience each time you play, and solid gameplay which rewards skilled play.

It's an incredible genre. I'm glad to see them gaining wider recognition; they've certainly been increasingly popular in this community.

Between this and Tokyo Jungle, it is a very good time for rogue likes.

I'm all on top of FTL, too, and the best part is it even plays on Linux so I get to sneak a few rounds in while I'm doing some systems administrations work. It's awesome!

I kept hearing this game mentioned, and it sounded dull as hell. But then I listened to last week's Besties, heard how excited Justin was about it, and gave the Quick Look a shot. ... I've never bought a game so fast after discovering what it was.

@NorseDudeTR said:

Such hard swings in this game! Suddenly you have six crew in the second sector, and things are going great, then you stumble into a solar storm and a ship that sets your whole operation ablaze, and you´re swearing and panicing, and then it´s all over. Love it!

Yeah, on my first try I managed to get 5 crew members and survived to sector 5 when I stumbled into an asteroid field where asteroids hit all essential systems at once and then strategically killed of my most combat trained people, before the mantis enemies teleported over and killed my near defenseless engie shield officer and human pilot.

@Zereta said:

@JamesJeux007 said:

Same here. When I finally logged out for the first time, Steam told me I had played this game for 8 hours straight. To which I replied : "What are you talking about, it's just... 5 IN THE MORNING ? WHAT THE HELL ?!"

Yea, you don't feel time passing at all. What I thought was an half an hour game turned out to be a 2 hour long session. You're too busy making sure the ship's not on fire & OH GOD THE DOOR SYSTEMS ARE DAMAGED AND I'M VENTING OXYGEN

That's why it struck me as weird when Brad said in the Quick Look and on the Bombcast that the game probably wouldn't take more than an hour to beat. While it certainly follows after games like Spelunky where you can't linger in any area for too long, only the first couple sectors in FTL are quick. Once you get to the mid- and late-game, each ship fight takes A) longer in general, because they have more HP and more defensive measures, and B) longer because you're pausing more often to micromanage your crew, your reactor power, your weapon targeting, you door system, etc.

The game can definitely take at least 2-3 hours to beat on Normal, depending on whether your weapon combination is crazy broken, or is more of a "slowly wear the enemy down bit by bit" sort of setup.

Also, my favourite recent event was when I was using the Mantis ship, and my entire crew consisted of only 2 Mantis crew members. One had teleported to the enemy ship and was fighting an enemy, but the other enemy crew member was repairing the medbay I had damaged earlier. Not wanting the enemy to be able to heal his crew, and also not wanting to be outnumbered 2-to-1, I threw caution to the wind, taking the only remaining crew member on my ship (my Mantis pilot), and teleporting him to the enemy ship as well. Each Mantis got their man, with my own ship hilariously empty at the time with no one flying it.

More folks should give this one a shot. It really is a great game.

What makes FTL awesome really is the stories that come out of it. Almost every session I play ends with an amazing story of desperation on my part, or complete fucked-ness. Telling my non-gamer friends stories about my FTL adventures and seeing them actually engrossed and wanting to hear more really is a testament to the quality of the moment to moment experience of playing the game, in my book.

Maybe I'm just a master storyteller :) But I'd push all the credit to FTL.

Fuck, I just started playing this and I'm loving it so far! I just felt the need to express my newfound love of this game somewhere.

I didn't expect this to be so enjoyable, but once I started playing it... ^__^