If you haven’t already heard about the space-based roguelike FTL, then you probably will pretty soon. After bringing in an unbelievable amount of money on Kickstarter and netting a number of awards, the game has finally kicked off its closed beta. If you’re not in, you’re out of luck.
The game is being developed by Justin Ma and Matthew Davis out of Shanghai, China. In the game, the player is responsible for the safety of a single ship in a hostile galaxy. Jumping from system to system thanks to its Faster-Than-Light drive, the player encounters a random event at each new destination. The bulk of the game, however, is managing the ship’s systems during firefights.
This seemingly simple concept has already earned the yet-to-be-released game two honorable mentions at the 2012 Independent Game Festival, and perhaps more importantly, over $200,000 of Kickstarter cash. A testament to the public interest in the game is that the designers had hoped to raise a mere $10,000.
Backers who contributed $25 or more would receive a code to play the beta version of the game via Steam. As of this morning, those codes are being sent out to backers. Everyone else, myself included, will just have to keep watching gameplay videos and dreaming.
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