the entire staff of Annapurna Interactive, the gaming division of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna, has resigned after failing to convince Ellison to let them spin off its games division into a new company. IGN is corroborating the report.

“All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned,’’ former president Nathan Gary and staffers told Bloomberg. “This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly.”

12 years ago the best indie game was released

FTL: Faster Than Light is a roguelike game created by indie developer Subset Games, which was released for Windows, MacOS, and Linux in September 2012. In the game, the player controls the crew of a single spacecraft, holding critical information to be delivered to an allied fleet, while being pursued by a large rebel fleet. The player must guide the spacecraft through eight sectors, each with planetary systems and events procedurally generated in a roguelike fashion, while facing rebel and other hostile forces, recruiting new crew, and outfitting and upgrading their ship. Combat takes place in pausable real time, and if the ship is destroyed or all of its crew lost, the game ends, forcing the player to restart with a new ship.

The concept for FTL was based on tabletop board games and other non-strategic space combat video games that required the player to manage an array of a ship's functions. The initial development by the two-man Subset Games was self-funded, and guided towards developing entries for various indie game competitions. With positive responses from the players and judges at these events, Subset opted to engage in a crowd-sourced Kickstarter campaign to finish the title, and succeeded in obtaining twenty times more than they had sought; the extra funds were used towards more professional art, music and in-game writing.

The game, considered one of the major successes of the Kickstarter fundraisers for video games, was released in September 2012 to positive reviews. An updated version, FTL: Advanced Edition, added additional ships, events, and other gameplay elements, and was released in April 2014 as a free update for existing owners and was put up for purchase on iPad devices

Synopsis

The player controls a spacecraft capable of traveling faster-than-light (FTL). It belongs to the Galactic Federation, which is on the verge of defeat in a war with an exclusively human rebel faction, simply called the Rebellion. The player's crew intercepts a data packet from the rebel fleet containing information that could throw the rebels into disarray and ensure a Federation victory. The goal is to reach Federation headquarters, waiting several space sectors away, while avoiding destruction from hostile ships or by the pursuing rebel fleet

Development

FTL is the product of the two-man team of Subset Games, Matthew Davis and Justin Ma. Both were employees of 2K Games's Shanghai studio, and became friends during their tenure there, playing various board games in their free time.

Davis had left 2K Games early in 2011, and after biking through China, returned and joined Ma, who had also recently quit, and began working on the core FTL game. They agreed they would spend a year towards development and if their efforts did not pan out, they would go on to other things. Following the success of the game, the pair began work on their second game, Into the Breach.

The idea for FTL was inspired by tabletop board games, such as Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, a 2005 space roguelite computer game released by Digital Eel, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, and non-strategic video games, such as Star Wars: X-Wing, where the player would have to route power to available systems to best manage the situation.

Unlike most space combat simulation games, the beginning idea was the player being captain rather than a pilot according to Davis, and to make "the player feel like they were Captain Picard yelling at engineers to get the shields back online", as stated by Ma. The intent of the game was to make it feel like a "suicide mission", and had adjusted the various elements of the game to anticipate a 10% success rate of winning the game.

The permanence of a gameplay mistake was a critical element they wanted to include, and gameplay features such as permadeath emphasized this approach.

Only as they neared the August 2011 Game Developers Conference in China after about six months of work, where they planned to submit FTL as part of the Independent Games Festival there, did they start focusing on the game's art. The game was named as a finalist at the IGF China competition, leading to initial media exposure for the game.

The additional attention to the game forced them to extend development – what would be a two-year process – and thus they turned to Kickstarter in order to fund the final polish of the game as well as costs associated to its release, seeking a total funding goal of $10,000. Subset games was able to raise over $200,000 through the effort. FTL represents one of the first games to come out from this surge in crowd-funded games, and demonstrates that such funding mechanisms can support video game development.

With the larger funding, Subset considered the benefit of adding more features at the cost of extending the game's release schedule. They opted to make some small improvements on the game, with only a one-month release delay from their planned schedule, and stated they would use the remaining Kickstarter funds for future project development.

The additional funds allowed them to pay for licensing fees of middleware libraries and applications to improve the game's performance. Additionally, they were able to outsource other game assets; in particular additional writing and world design was provided by Tom Jubert (Penumbra, Driver: San Francisco), while music was composed by Ben Prunty.

Prunty wanted to create an interactive soundtrack that would change when the player entered and exited battle; for this, he composed the calmer "Explore" (non-battle) version of each song, then build atop that to create the more-engaging "Battle" version. Within the game, both versions of the song play at the same time, with the game cross-fading between the versions based on action in the game.

One of the highest tiers of the Kickstarter campaign allowed a contributor to help design a species for inclusion in the game. One supporter contributed at this level and helped design the Crystal.

FTL: Advanced Edition

FTL: Advanced Edition adds several new events, ships, equipment and other features to the existing game. This version was released on April 3, 2014 as a free update for FTL owners, and as a separate release for iPad devices, with the potential for other mobile systems in the future. A new playable species, the Lanius — metallic lifeforms that reduce oxygen levels in any room they are in — were introduced.

Subset Games has stated that they would not likely create a direct sequel to FTL, though future games they are planning may include similar concepts that were introduced in FTL. Their subsequent game, Into the Breach was not funded through Kickstarter and it is unlikely that they will use the platform in future, as they have raised enough money through sales of FTL to fund future projects.

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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

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• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
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Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
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Too many out there, so it's nice to have a game reviewer explore obscure consoles and their games with a mellow vibe.

They were even throbbing from root to tip, so to speak.

This is day #2 of this game for me. I am eager to find more weirdness in the stars.

It'll probably be just their collection of AI tools and systems, which they are trademarking to sell/lease to third parties to use later.

I thought the gaming world was over the sexist thing; apparently I was wrong

I'd hate to tell her that the gaming world still isn't entirely over it 25 years later

Are you kidding me? This 'mon is a workhorse of hp absorb and dealing damage.

In Violet they wreck the opposition. Hidden OP.

Yes, I have a foil cardboard copy.

EDIT: Okay, Grass Flying type??? But in Violet they get Dragon type moves ... interesting

As a resident of Yharnam i hate it here but sad depressing game based in my country came out I must soyface.

Art by Raven Lynn Clemens

Back on my Biohazard and Monster Hunter kick revisiting old favorites from my childhood. Gotta play the new translation of MH 2 Dos. On the RPG front, still playing Ultima Online and am back at it again with Neverwinter Night Enhanced Edition.

hbu?

Anyone playing? I got to play a bit this morning and it was very good. This is easily my favorite fighter of all time, and I have been playing it on and off since 2000...so, I am going to add some rambling thoughts:

-Feels like input lag is reduced from the PS3 version, as I can magneto infinite way easier...which is nice. Actually, Maximillian confirmed this. I used to think my dropped combos on PS3 was just me being old...turns out, my reflexes just yearn for the Dreamcast input lag.

-rematch remembers your characters and assists...which is cool. But picking a new team, the assist pick defaults to whatever assist was in that slot on the previous team...which is weird, because I kind of pic that shit on muscle memory. I ended up with Psylocke on gamma assist because I was not paying attention...that was no good.

-They took out the screen flash for a KO'd character, which I did not realize was a response my brain relied on.

-I really, really wish they added a placement system like in SF6, where you play 10 matches, and the game figures out what rank you should be in. If I am playing ranked, I want to play other decent people, and it's just a pile of bodies right now. MVC2 is basically two different games: the high level meta, and the fun low tiers. I have low tier teams, but, I want to play ranked to play good people again...so it does not feel good to go in guns blazing because I don't know if I am playing the best guile in the world or not.

All in all...this is going to greatly affect my productivity.