very addicting gameplay



great variety (weapons, ship systems, races) makes a lot of different strategies possible



basic graphic style + background music provide a great sci-fi atmosphere



random map generation supports the replayability

randomness sometimes causes frustration

Space Ship Battles, strategy. Round based ship movement, but real time combat. Upgrade your ship, recruit different races. Very addicting, great Soundtrack.Some achievements are very hard.Here you are no rebel who wants to defeat an evil empire. You are escaping from the rebel fleet, heading through different sectors, aiming to arrive at your base.There is not much of an actual story, but frankly there’s all that’s needed to provide a great and entertaining game. There are some random encounters where you need to make decisions, but alltogether this kind of game does not need a deeper story. It’s already addicting enough.EverYou navigate through various points on your star map. Each jump costs fuel and also makes the rebel fleet follow you, so you have to decide which way to go. On your way through the different sectors you use combats (and some random encounters) to obtain scrap (= currency) and sometimes (but more rarely) also loot to upgrade your ship, so you will be fit enough for the final boss.The random encounters are indeed random. There is very often more than one possible outcome for your decisions.The combat itself is real time combat – you will be using your space bar to pause the game while executing your strategy (aiming lasers, make crew repair damaged systems, etc.) pretty often.Once you find a store with a crew teleporter in stock and you happen to have enough scrap, you will also be able to board the enemy ship and fight them on their ground.There are also systems like mind control, cloaking and even a race that sucks oxygen from their surrounding and make others suffocate.Faster than light provides a lot of possibilities and is a great time sink.Sometimes the randomness turns out quite frustrating though, so prepare to do a lot of restarts, like when you suddenly find yourself in an asteroid field and encounter an enemy with a Zoltan Shield. (additional shield that prevents actions like boarding and mind control before being taken down)If you fulfill certain conditions you will unlock additional ships. Doing so feels really satisfying.As you see from the store screenshots, the graphic is pretty basic. Normally I am more for nice graphis and more color, but this graphic style is absolutely sufficient and together with the background sound, it provides an awesome sci-fi feeling.Some of the achievements are very hard and will take a lot of time to complete.Faster Than Light is a very addicting space ship strategy game that lets you fight your way through different space sectors, lets you upgrade your ship and punishes you hard for bad decisions and bad combat.Its randomness in terms of map generation and enemies/locations provides an even greater replayability value, but sometimes also leads to frustration because there is a possibility of encountering pretty tough situations. Yes, this will happen. Its upsides still overweight its downsides easily.I am by far no great strategy player, but I have had tons of fun with this game.There is a good variety of ship systems, weapons/tech and also some different alien races, each with a special trait.On meeting certain conditions, you will unlock additional ships. Doing so feels very satisfying and those additional ships also provide even more variety because of their different starting crew/systems/weapons.There is a lot to do.If you feel curious about this, give it a try.