FTL: Faster Than Light Interview at RockPaperShotgun
FTL: Faster Than Light Interview at RockPaperShotgun
Interview - posted by Crooked Bee on Mon 6 August 2012, 20:17:14
Tags: Faster Than Light; Roguelike; Subset GamesThe folks over at RockPaperShotgun have put up an interview with Subset Games' Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, focusing on their soon-to-be-released (in September, actually) spaceship roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light, currently in the closed, backer-only beta. Have a snippet:
As you may recall, we did our own interview on the game back in April, and also reviewed the beta recently. The luckiest of us have even already played the beta; as for the rest of you, September isn't so far away now!
RPS: Any surprising influences?
Justin Ma: It may not be surprising since I say it often, but Spelunky was an experience we drew from frequently. Other than being an excellent game, I feel Derek Yu really figured out the formula for distilling the spirit of Roguelikes into another genre.
Matthew Davis: King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame would probably be a surprising influence. It reminded me how fun and diverse entirely text-based adventures can be. And it has a brilliantly crafted atmosphere that really immerses you into a role, which I hope FTL manages to do as well.
The game seemed pretty playable from the IGF/Onlive build. How much of what you want to achieve did it represent, and how far along is the current Steam-served beta?
Matthew Davis: That IGF build represented the core gameplay and experience that we set out to make last year. Since then, we’ve been iterating and expanding on what we already had. The focus since then has been fleshing out the universe with more aliens and events. And since a rogue-like lives and dies on re-playability, we’ve also been making sure the game has enough variety to ensure the player wants to keep coming back for more adventures. Some people in the Beta have already invested 40+ hours into the game, so I’d cautiously say that so far it seems to be worth coming back to over and over again.
Justin Ma: It may not be surprising since I say it often, but Spelunky was an experience we drew from frequently. Other than being an excellent game, I feel Derek Yu really figured out the formula for distilling the spirit of Roguelikes into another genre.
Matthew Davis: King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame would probably be a surprising influence. It reminded me how fun and diverse entirely text-based adventures can be. And it has a brilliantly crafted atmosphere that really immerses you into a role, which I hope FTL manages to do as well.
The game seemed pretty playable from the IGF/Onlive build. How much of what you want to achieve did it represent, and how far along is the current Steam-served beta?
Matthew Davis: That IGF build represented the core gameplay and experience that we set out to make last year. Since then, we’ve been iterating and expanding on what we already had. The focus since then has been fleshing out the universe with more aliens and events. And since a rogue-like lives and dies on re-playability, we’ve also been making sure the game has enough variety to ensure the player wants to keep coming back for more adventures. Some people in the Beta have already invested 40+ hours into the game, so I’d cautiously say that so far it seems to be worth coming back to over and over again.
As you may recall, we did our own interview on the game back in April, and also reviewed the beta recently. The luckiest of us have even already played the beta; as for the rest of you, September isn't so far away now!
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