What I’ve come to learn about the roguelike genre is that it’s fairly wide open when it comes to implementation of its core and ancillary game mechanics. Some games like FTL and Slay the Spire click with me, others not so much. After another round of FTL runs, my thoughts on why I enjoy FTL in particular have become even more cemented. I’ll highlight two reasons that stuck out on these latest runs to keep things brief:

Different tools, same toolbox. Different starting points, same puzzle.
Over the course of playing FTL, you learn about your toolbox: the weapons, drones, augments, systems, and crew that exist out there in the galaxy. However, any single run, your tools will be limited to what you have with your starting ship and what becomes available to you over the next eight sectors. Similarly, the FTL puzzle is learned as you play the game more and more. The progression of difficulty, the challenges of each sector, the challenge at the end of it all become more known and predictable with repeat playthroughs. That is the big picture. The mini puzzles that can be encountered at any given beacon; however, are never known and no outcome is guaranteed.
Offering a variety of starting conditions and then randomization within a known sandbox is what I’ve come to love about FTL. It all boils down to the fun of solving a known puzzle from random angles with a different set of tools every time.

Scope and format.
FTL runs for me last roughly two to three hours. There are twenty-eight ships, so playing through them all took me approximately seventy hours. Each beacon contains a bite-sized amount of content, maybe ten minutes at most. I am laying this out because I find this format to be very player friendly. It’s easy to pause at any moment. I can jump in and out of the game entirely and not really lose track of anything. You can get an understanding of your situation from essentially just the top-down, ship overview screen. All this is to say, the format and structure of FTL is very consumable, understandable, and player friendly.
With the scope, I’m referring to the number of weapons, crew races, enemy ship types, etc., essentially the amount of variety in the game’s systems. This is a tough one to articulate because it’s very much a “feel” thing. The way I’ll put it, is that over the course of playing FTL, the game’s scope allows the player to gain familiarity with all the various gameplay elements and their variations while still surprising and challenging the player. An example I can give is that I encountered the Burst Laser 2 five times (excluding the runs I started with it) over twenty-eight runs. Now imagine if the Burst Laser 2 was as easy to find as the Flak 1. I’d be pulling up to the flagship sporting two Flak 1s and BL2s every couple runs and just blowing the rebels out of the water. With FTL’s scope and balancing, this doesn’t happen, and it means who have to make do with the Hull Lasers of the world. You’re not continuously searching for what’s optimal, you’re searching for what you can get by with.

Read my full thoughts on FTL HERE[sevastromo.com]

What if I told you that a game without much in the way of animations, where character have no hands or legs, and weapons don’t move has some of the most visceral fatalities of any game? You’d be a little confused and rightfully so. This indie strategy game has accomplished so much in the way of immersion that I had an out of body experience the other day thinking about just this. I broke concentration in the middle of a tight skirmish in Battle Brothers and realized how simplistic every action looked onscreen. From an outsider’s perspective, one can hardly tell if anything is happening. An icon may flash above a character’s head, a character may glide across tiles on the screen like a chess piece but nothing visually extravagant or near realism is displayed, no one has legs for goodness sake! However, to me, the battle felt visceral with each turn feeling so precious, yet I was rushing decisions eager to deal a decisive blow to the enemy’s forces. This game gets you caught up in the heat of battle, literally. As the commander of your forces, you’ll sometimes lose sight of the big picture, the larger implications of a tactical decision will be missed, and you’ll pay for it later. On other occasions, you’ll remain cool and calculated and pull off flawless victories with your men leaving the battlefield with not so much a scratch on them. Overhype Studios, developers of Battle Brothers, have accomplished a great deal with this gripping, low-fantasy, turn-based RPG. They have masterfully married beautifully detailed art design with tense, strategic combat with both resting on game progression that pulls you into a huge, procedurally generated continent and connects you with a band of misfits who you grow to call brothers.

Battle Brothers combines top-notch mercenary company management with the best tactical turn-based combat I’ve ever played. The low fantasy setting dances on the border somewhere between real-life medieval times, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Lord of the Rings. With no story/plot to speak of, the difficulty and company progression are the primary drivers over time. If you can take the reins of a far from noteworthy band of men, set your own goals and make the most out of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ situation, then the life of a mercenary captain might be right for you.

My Full Review of Battle Brothers[sevastromo.com]

Sevastromo Station[sevastromo.com]