FTL is really great. For years I've dreamed of being a starship captain, living out the kinds of battles you might see in the Balance of Terror episode of Star Trek, or Wrath of Khan, but every time somebody came up with a new starship combat simulator game (going back as far as The Warp Factor for the Apple II, a game I still feel a little nostalgia about) it disappointed, never having the sort of drama those shows and movies manage to have.
Until now - by focusing on your crew, and where they are in the ship, something magical happens! Even though they're mere pixel art, a name, and a few stats, suddenly it feels like real drama! Crap! Someone's beamed aboard my ship! Crap! The engine room's on fire! Crap! We're running out of oxygen! And the crew is so brave! Staying and putting out a fire even if it kills them! They man their posts until the bitter end! Actually, sometimes I wish they wouldn't, I wish they had the good sense to run to the medical bay when they're about to die, but, well, I guess it is more fun this way.
And the permadeath raises the stakes even more, of course.
I do have some negative things to say about it but I'll save that for this post I've been brewing in my head about procedural content and Spelunky. That post is getting a long time to simmer and should be delicious.
For now I'll just say, yay Kickstarter! One thing that could kill indie devs ability to have success with kickstarter is if the games start coming back crappy. That's probably my biggest fear - that these high-profile games that were funded on kickstarter turn out to be meh. That people might regret funding them. And then that source of funding dries up. So it's quite a relief that one of the first of the well-funded Kickstarter games has come out so great.
(In other news, Playstation Mobile is now a thing! I'm quite pleased with how high-profile it is in the Playstation Store, and the buzz on the internet. If you have a Vita go buy Super Crate Box, that should keep it occupied until sixty second shooter Deluxe comes out. (It still hasn't passed QA yet. (Framerate issues - apparently their testers are able to get to more intense levels than I am. (But it's great that they care.) ) ) )
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