Subset Games plans to release their roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light on iPad early next year, the developer revealed today. The iPad version will be accompanied by a free expansion for the PC version called FTL: Advanced Edition.
In FTL, players command a ship through hostile space. On their mission, they'll encounter randomly generated events like pirate attacks or civilians in need of assistance. How you react to these situations could have huge ramifications on your mission. Players will also directly control crew members as they fight enemy ships or boarding parties.
FTL: Advanced Edition provides several new toys. Players can outfit their ship with a mind control system in order to take control of enemy soldiers, or a hacking system to disrupt their ship's systems. They'll also be able to wield stun and area-of-effect weapons.
Subset Games also enlisted Planescape: Torment and Project Eternity writer Chris Avellone to help design a new sector. He'll be collaborating with FTL writer Tom Jubert on this dangerous new region. Furthermore, the two will be designing new random events that can occur throughout the game.
"In addition to new content, we’ve continued to polish FTL and add some of the most requested small features," Subset says. "As a few examples: you’ll be able to save your crew positions and send them back to battle-stations, save and quit during combat, and find more items for purchase in stores. For the purists out there, FTL vanilla will still be available. All of the new content can be disabled from within the hangar before starting a new game."
The upcoming iPad version will come with all of the new content and improvements of the Advanced Edition. Subset says that the game runs well on iPad 2 or later as well as iPad Minis. The development team is considering other tablets such as Tablet or Surface as well but can't confirm anything yet.
"For now, the answer is that we hope to get it on all tablet devices but do not know for sure. When we first released FTL, we did so on three operating systems simultaneously and it was a gargantuan task for a two man studio to accomplish. Learning from the difficulties of the past, we’re trying to preserve our sanity by focusing on one system at a time."
Subset Games also considered creating a smartphone version of FTL. After some testing, though, they determined that they couldn't get the game to work properly on phones due to the small screen.
