10 years of FTL: The making of an enduring spaceship simulator

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Today, FTL: Faster than Light is recognized as one of the most influential games in the indie sector. Alongside The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky, it was part of a holy trinity of games that popularized the roguelite genre in the early '10s.

But before it was a hit, FTL was just a humble idea shared by Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, two developers working at 2K’s Shanghai office. The studio wasn’t a bad place to work, by their accounts, but they just weren’t making the kinds of games they were interested in. So Davis and Ma departed the big-budget firm and started a hobby project to keep them busy while they were looking for new jobs.

“The original intention, at least from my perspective, was that [FTL] was only intended as a hobby project or a prototype,” Davis tells Ars. “It was something in between jobs to build up a resume that we could use to get a job at a studio working on projects that we were more excited about. But we stumbled into something that became a lot bigger than what we set out to do.”