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Convoy is FTL's Long-Lost Brother

Convoy is FTL's Long-Lost Brother - Preview

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 15 March 2015 / 3,993 Views

Take a glance at Convoy Games’ first game - Convoy - and you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’re looking at an FTL: Faster Than Light expansion pack. “I loved FTL”, Sander, the manager of Convoy Games said to me when I asked him about the inspiration behind Convoy, “but we wanted to make a roguelike game that was fairer to players in terms of the decisions they make rather than random chance alone”.

Half an hour later and I came away convinced that Convoy will be hugely popular amongst FTL fans the world over who've been clamouring for a sequel. I expect it will be cherished and adored just as FTL was three years ago.

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Convoy centres around your spaceship, which has been grounded on a hostile planet. Your job is to use a big hauler to acquire fuel and resources that will eventually fix the ship and get it off the planet. The hauler is big and clunky, but while this means it can take quite the beating, it is still your only lifeline on the plant, so your main objective is to keep it safe as you travel across the treacherous planet in search of key resources.

It’s through the hiring and buying of other vehicles that the game derives its name. There are many different vehicles available to purchase throughout Convoy, and most have the advantage of being nimbler than the hauler. You can purchase a maximum of four of these vehicles at a time to help you out, hiring them from camps you happen to come across on the planet's surface.

These vehicles can be upgraded and altered in various ways, ensuring a great deal of customisation is available to players. Your Hauler can also be upgraded (for example, I saw a "drone" ability, which fires a drone from the hauler that targets and attacks a single enemy at a time), and more abilities become available for it as you progress, but you're constantly engaging in a balancing act between conserving resources and spending them on what you view as essential upgrades.

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Convoy Games' elevator pitch for the game is “FTL meets Mad Max”, and it’s not hard to see why. Battles take place on desert wasteland roads that are reminiscent of Mad Max, and a pause mechanic like the one found in FTL allows you to carefully plan your response to events on the road. The moving road mechanic allows for obstacles to make their way across the screen, and the more tactical gamers out there will be able to use these to their advantage, forcing enemies into collision courses. Some obstacles result in instant death to vehicles (like electrical wires or mountains), whilst others will simply damage them (think scrap metal). 

In Convoy, you can explore the world at your own pace. Unlike FTL, which forced you to move quickly from the left side of the screen to the right, Convoy gives you an entire world to pace yourself across, albeit one with a limited amount of fuel, which ensures you can't aimlessly move about. There are main objectives to complete which push the central story forwards, as well as side objectives that are randomised each time you start the game, allowing for unique play-throughs.

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Where Convoy deviates from FTL is in the way the game treats the decisions you make. During each playthrough players will have to make numerous decisions, such as whether or not to help a man who holds a cure to a township's misfortune, and every choice you make will have consequences. Convoy will then use these decisions you make to trigger events further through the playthrough. So for instance a person you helped earlier in the game may improve your reputation with a certain faction, opening up new missions later on.

When I asked Sander how long a typical playthrough was expected to be, I was given the answer “30 to 40 minutes”. This may sound short to many, but Convoy is made with replayability in mind thanks to the unique event structure. Sander stated that Convoy features over 70,000 words worth of dialogue, which will hopefully ensure as little duplication of events between different playthroughs as possible.

Convoy will be available for PC and Mac this April via Steam. Expected a firmer release date to be announced in the coming weeks. 


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