In which I discuss FTL

I think by now it's sort of redundant to mention how much I love space exploration, video games, and space exploration video games, so I'll probably eventually stop mentioning it.

Lately I've been playing several sessions of the game FTL. If you haven't heard of it, FTL is a roguelike spaceship management simulator game. Kind of a mouthful, but the long and short of it is that FTL gives you the experience of being a starship captain in a procedurally-generated universe, tasked with the mission of carrying important information to your superiors, 8 sectors away from your starting point. The roguelike nature of the game means that if your ship explodes, that's it. You have to start over from the beginning. There are no checkpoints, no way to save the game in case you make the wrong decision and want to go back.

The game is actually fairly simple, on the surface. The interface is a top-down view of your ship, which is divided into different rooms and systems. You have a number of crew members that you can control, ordering them to man different systems, make repairs, or repel boarders. Each sector is divided into procedurally-generated systems of planets. You jump from system to system and at each system have a random encounter. Sometimes you run into pirates, sometimes you find people in distress, sometimes there's a sun or an asteroid field or a store. Combat consists of aiming and firing weapons, using different drones, or even teleporting to the enemy ship to fight it out face to face. As you go, you acquire material to make upgrades to your systems or purchase new equipment.

There's something extremely satisfying about ordering your crewman to man their stations while launching missiles and lasers at an enemy ship. I've also experienced a visceral pain as I've watched a particularly good ship and crew break apart under the onslaught of an enemy ship. Like I said, immersive. Even though the interface and graphics are simplistic, the gameplay, story, and random nature of the game makes it feel quite real.

One thing I don't recommend for gamers that tend to get very immersed in games is naming your crewmen after people you know, unless you want those people to die horribly. Crewmembers can and will die in fires, from boarders, by suffocation, from space diseases, and just from a straight-up direct hit from a missile to the room they're currently inhabiting.

I think the takeaway from this is that it doesn't require the latest and greatest graphics technology or a 3D virtual reality headset and tactile interface to make a game immersive. I've felt more immersed in a book or a well-made movie than I ever have in Skyrim or similar current-gen games. The real immersion comes from creating a believable universe, an experience that is plausible enough in and of itself  that you don't doubt it while you play. FTL manages this, and while I'd love to have a similar experience with a more complex game, but until I find that more complex game, FTL serves to temporarily scratch that itch.