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.

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.

FTL is recognized alongside games like Spelunky, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space and The Binding of Isaac as helping to popularize the "roguelite" genre that uses some, but not all, of the principles of a classical roguelike.

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 goal is to reach Federation headquarters, waiting several space sectors away, while avoiding destruction from hostile ships or by the pursuing rebel fleet.

[6][7] The final sector ends with a battle against the Rebel Flagship, a multi-stage fight which results in either victory or defeat for the Federation.

The player can revisit waypoints, but each warp jump consumes fuel and causes the rebel fleet to advance in each sector, and slowly take over more of the beacons.

For example, Rockmen are immune to fire and have high health, but move significantly slower than other species, hindering their ability to respond to crises in time.

Waypoints may include stores (which may offer various systems, crew members, weapons, resources and other items in exchange for scrap), distress calls, hostile ship encounters or other various events.

All ships have two additional layouts (except Crystal and Lanius, which only have one) featuring different color schemes, equipment, and crew, that can be unlocked by completing base-layout objectives.

[13] However, they also considered that each loss was a learning experience for the player, gaining knowledge of what battles to engage in and when to avoid or abandon unwinnable fights.

[19] At the Festival, FTL was nominated for, though did not win, the Grand Prize and the Excellent in Design award; these accolades further helped spark interest in the game.

[20] Subset Games had initially planned to work on the title for about a three-month period after saving enough of their own money to cover expenses for about a year.

[21] Their Kickstarter approach was considered well-timed, riding on the coattails of the highly successful Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter in March 2012,[22] as well as gaining the attention of top developers like Ken Levine and Markus Persson;[16] with interest spurred in crowd-funded games, Subset games was able to raise over $200,000 through the effort.

[22] 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.

[13] The additional funds allowed them to pay for licensing fees of middleware libraries and applications to improve the game's performance.

[24] Prunty was already ready to provide Subset with some music tracks prior to the Kickstarter, but with its success, they were able to pay for a full soundtrack.

[29] The team looked at bringing this version to the PlayStation Vita, which also would have supported touch controls, but ultimately believed that the screen size of the system was too limiting for the game.

[13] FTL generally received positive reviews, with praise for the game's captivating nature and means of tapping into the imagination of the players who have envisioned themselves as captains of starships.

[47] The iPad version of FTL: Advanced Edition was praised for the intuitive touch controls, fine-tuned to work on the device.