Great news, spacefarers! A free expansion to FTL, FTL: Advanced Edition is due for early 2014.
Announced on the official website for the game, FTL: Advanced Edition will add more weapons, encounters, enemies, systems and more:
Mind Control System: Temporarily turn enemies into allies. Force a boarder to repair the damage they just did, or have the enemy pilot sabotage their own helm.
Hacking System: Lockdown and disrupt enemy systems. Unique effects for each system, ranging from forcing a teleporter remove boarders to making the medbay damage instead of heal.
New Sector and Events: Our writer Tom Jubert has returned along with special guest writer Chris Avellone (of Planescape fame), who managed to find some time for us between his work on Project Eternity and Wasteland 2. They’ve been helping us add a new sector and scatter new events throughout the rest of the game.
New Weapons and Effects: Many new weapons that take advantage of new mechanics: overcharging to increase the number of volleys, stun effects to freeze crew, and area effect targeting, to name a few.
And more systems, drones, augments, enemy ships, enemy layouts, and hostile environments. All of which we’ll be sure to talk about more in the coming weeks!
The update will be free to all existing owners of FTL.
Also announced in conjunction to the expansion was the news that FTL will be released on iPad in early 2014. The interface has been redesigned to fit the touch interface more appropriately, and will be compatible with iPad and iPad Minis from Generation 2 and later. The studio has committed to releasing on Surface and Android, however, due to the small team size, a date has not been announced:
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. Expanding tablet support will be our next highest priority, but we don’t want to make any promises (or rejections) until we’re 100% sure of the outcome.
The update will be available in 2014. For those who have yet to get on board with FTL’s particular brand of space roguelike challenge, it is available for $10, DRM free on their store.