Humble Bundle and FTL

Ryan and I have been going to Humble Bundle for some of our videogames ever since we discovered it. To me it's really cool that you can support awesome charities by buying games, comic books, and even classes. Recently Ryan got some awesome classes from Humble Bundle for Udemy. If you haven't tried Humble Bundle, I can't suggest it enough. It's a "pay-what-you-want" type deal, and you can split up the contributions as you please. The time limit on each bundle is typically two weeks long I believe so they change it up quite a bit. Ryan and I don't really buy games EVERY weekly bundle , but I like to go look. One of my first purchases included FTL: Faster Than Light. Really great game. I just wanted to make you all aware of Humble Bundle :] So much awesome stuff on the interenet!

Like I said at the beginning of the year, I am going to be telling some adventures about games that I love. This doesn't mean I am not doing art. I actually have always been playing video games so this is nothing new, other than now I'm talking about it. I like to do a lot of different things, I just don't fan-girl out over a lot of stuff in public. Since I brought it up, FTL is the first one I will talk about to get the ball rolling.

I love playing this game, and frequently I play with Ryan, nervously yelling behind me to shut doors or go send a character in to battle an enemy. I wouldn't have it any other way ♥ *sigh* Okay so maybe frantic yelling is not so great.

Opening Title Page

After briefly replaying the game, Ryan and I discovered some things have changed though. And we forgot how INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT it was.

Well, there was my friend's voice in the back of my head saying, "You will die over and over again~" ... but I had chosen to ignore it. What could go wrong?

Choose Your Ship!

A lot.

When you start FTL, you get to choose an awesome ship. I chose one of the ships Ryan and I had unlocked a while back. On the screen, they offer you the chance to name your ship (which we just left as is because jellyfish are awesome), other ship layouts if you have unlocked them, and they even let you customize your lovely slug people's names (or whatever you have). ♥ Ah yes, slug-people. With each different ship you actually get a different crew that can vary in size and race. There are some pretty fun ones on there, but I like the slugs a lot because they are telepathic so they can actually see where the enemies are on enemy ships. Each race has their own "talent." Also, the slug-people have "Slug Repair Gel" which makes it so that if there is a breach in your hull, it repairs over time. Slugs are magic.

Ah, a pirate!

In the game, right away you get thrown in and you just move around through the void of space. Take note of what you have in your UI before moving forward and don't pull a Chelsea and say "I'm just going to go for it." You will save yourself some pain.

In the top UI, you see how much life your Hull has (as well as how quickly it goes away), your Shields,  a money-form (looks like a gear), fuel (looks like an atom), missiles (gosh I wonder ...), drone parts to repair your drones if you have any (looks kind of like a radio), and your crew! Hello Valeriya and Bloch. I am so sorry I am your captain.

The bottom UI is where you can see your power distribution, which you can toggle by left-clicking them "on" or right-clicking them "off." As you will see, Ryan and I forgot this. >.>;

So after playing for a bit, Ryan and I quickly ran into our own set of issues. We like to fight everything and had forgotten how the game exactly worked. And when you get into a fight with an enemy ship, you aren't exactly thinking clearly. A conversation went like this:

Ryan: Press twice to put your Autofire on.
Chelsea: *left clicks twice* I pressed, it deselects. I'm just gonna click every time. I don' need no Autofire.
Ryan: Hmm ... right click?
Chelsea: *right click* :< Now my weapons are turned off! *left click* Guh I don't want to mess it up.
Ryan: But ...  Autofire ;-;
Chelsea: NO. I am clicking things. *click click click*
*both oblivious to the Autofire button*

Yep. That's us! We still won that battle, even with our "What's going on?!" confusion, but that's not saying much. Most of the early battles are pretty easy, even in "Normal."

The Rebels Approach!

A Sector Map.

The map is a series of blank space, stars, asteroid fields, and planets. Some of them have stores, distress beacons, and each map has one "EXIT" location. In the map I posted up you can see the rebels are coming and they want to kill you! Did I forget to mention YOU ARE AT WAR. Yeah, kind of scary. Whatever you do, DO NOT let them catch up to you. You will die, almost instantly. Not that it matters, you will probably die soon in FTL anyway.

After you hit "NEXT SECTOR" you can go to this little map that gives you a decision of where to go. Really though, it's a matter of "do you want to play the game a little or die instantaneously?"

Ryan and I chose the Engi Controlled sector and chose to play it safe. Spoiler allert: we die in the first Nebula section. (That's okay though because this game is awesome and I want to share it with all of you!)

Our beautiful ship~!

When you are looking at your ship, you can move your creatures around to repair it. I have one of mine fixing the Door System, while the other mans the Pilot System. They can benefit the Engine, Weapons System, Shield, and Pilot System. Each character gets better over time at the tasks you set them too. It's so rewarding to see your babies grow up! ;-; They just grow up so fast.

And then quickly proceed to die. Yeah so eventually you may have what happened to us where you run out of fuel and have to put on a "distress beacon" to hopefully have someone come along and help you before the Rebels arrive. We got the droid ship that was OP and blew us up in two seconds.

Game over, man! Game over!

Even though you will die a lot in this game (we sure do!) this is still a really fun game. It's easy to get started again and each time everything is randomly generated so you don't know what your sectors will look like or who you will be battling next. Ryan and I have beaten the game once, maybe twice, and I recall it being very difficult, but rewarding.

If you would like to know more about the game, I would love to tell you more about it! I really enjoy talking to people about video games since it is something I am passionate about. Recently I have been playing a lot of Starbound so I want to make an entry about that as well. I have a lot more to say about Starbound because since it is a multi-player game, it makes it easy for me to play with Ryan. He loves to play video games too, and is in fact the one that normally plays scary games for me.

Also, another announcement of sorts: one of my friends, Sam Whalen wants to make video game videos with his brother, Ryan, and myself from time to time. You may see streaming of our video game sessions from time to time and find out how weird we really are. If you haven't figured that out already that is. I will let you know when that happens. With Sam, we will probably be playing Minecraft most of the time, but I will try and toss in some videos of Don't Starve or other awesome games. I am not 100% positive when that will be happening, but I will let you all know as soon as it happens. Let me know what you like to play or give me some suggestions of what you would like me to play!

♥ Chelsea ♥