Void War is a welcome take on the classic space game FTL that I couldn’t be happier to dump hours into. With it being almost 13 years since FTL released, I can painfully imagine how many gamers may have never heard of it. Void War shows us how a modern FTL would look if it stepped into a grimdark setting right out of Warhammer 40k.
The premise kicks off with a disaster as the God-King has fallen and the entire world is plummeting into war. Join the fight as you travel through space battling raiders, cults, and demons to build one beast of a ship. You’ll need to micromanage your crew while firing cannons and slinging fireballs to survive each encounter.
While the premise is simple, the way you get from A to B is where the fun lies. As a roguelite, every run is unique as you piece together your ship and crew. Will you hire cultists to summon demons and poison ships from a distance? Or are you the sort of person who wants a big gun to pummel enemy ships?
Certain areas have unique weather effects like extreme heat triggering fires or a corrosive area creating poisonous clouds.
Every journey is filled with splitting paths and opportunities to craft builds, and that’s what makes Void War tough to stop playing. I’ve had runs that revolve around maniacally sending barrages of projectiles that suddenly become ghoul hordes. It’s amusing to watch as they swarm an enemy ship. However, that’s not to say I haven’t also used a gassy bloated corpse to control my ship as well.
Part of what I love is how much room for creativity there is in assembling your crew or your ship. After several wins reaching up to the Torment V difficulty, I’m always discovering new ways to play and ideas for future runs. I recall a ship module that made a weapon stronger based on how many crew members I had, but it’d also take half their health.
It’s a brutal sacrifice that makes for an interesting time if you’re able to flood your ship with people. Even if those people are demons, machines, and of course, normal boring humans. However, it’s not only about ship weapons and modules. You can also equip your crew with weapons, armor, tools, and spells. This is where it’s fun to mix strategies like breaching ships with tanky characters and then healing them from afar using psykers.
You can invest in your ship to upgrade systems or completely buy new ones for cool abilities.
When I’m not strategizing, I appreciate how well the developers designed Void War as a whole. Every panel in your UI feels bolted on as hanging cables and wires connect each window. It creates an industrial aesthetic that fits this dark world as my ship clunks along. Which is further enhanced by the ambiance of radio chatter echoing behind static.
That ambiance does a great job of setting the mood during quiet moments while still knowing when to amp up the music for intense battles. There’s something about chanting voices fitting a little too well.
One area Void War occasionally feels off, however, is how specific it is with tiny bits of lore for a world we know nothing about. This leads to half-baked world-building at times, where you’ll hear names for specific ships or factions without having context. I had trouble keeping track of how many different factions and cults there are. There’s the Cult of Death, the Blood Cult, Technocult, Machine Cult, War Cult, e.g.
While I didn’t expect a story in Void War, it feels like the universe assumes you’re already familiar with it, despite there not being much of one. This creates a situation where events and passing conversations are only flavor text. Which, unfortunately, makes events that have moral decisions feel meaningless. It’s difficult to care about one side or the other when it doesn’t seem to matter.
It makes me wonder if the developers set Void War in the Warhammer 40k universe, changed some names, and assumed it would still work. I’ve seen 40k fans more well-versed than me make comparisons between factions and cults across both worlds. But let’s be honest, if you’re a fan of FTL coming into this game, you’re not really searching for a story.
Void War Preview | Closing Thoughts
Certain weapons work well for creating hull breaches to quickly drain an enemy ship’s oxygen.
I love what Void War already has going for it and I can’t wait to see how the rest of its development goes. It’s a great strategy roguelite that continues to show why FTL is the classic that it is. The developer Tundra nailed the aesthetic and gameplay loop to keep me coming back. Whether that’s to try a different strategy, a new ship, or to try winning on an even tougher difficulty.
Void War was provided by the developer via a Steam code.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.