Down with the Ship's demo proves it's a worthy spiritual successor to the space-faring magic captured by FTL: Faster than Light

As a certified FTL: Faster Than Light sicko (it's my most-played game on Steam and it's not even close), I'm always excited when a game comes along that iterates on the wonderfully simple-yet-challenging roguelike. Enter Down with the Ship, an asynchronous auto battler that adds a thrilling layer of chance to the formula. It even has a demo out now so you can try it for yourself.

Down with the Ship combines ship building with auto battling. What that means in practice is you have to select pieces from a draft. They could be additional weapons, hull parts, reactors, and even parasites and other oddities.

The fights themselves are completely hands-off. It's down to you to assemble the best ship possible and then all you can do is watch while you either blast your enemy to pieces or they destroy your vessel as you go down with the ship. Oh, now I get why it's called that.

The fact you can build the ship yourself means placement is extremely important. Certain parts get buffs if they're adjacent to each other, and you'll quickly find that reducing your firing time so you can launch more volleys at the enemy is extremely important if you hope to survive the harshness of space for very long.

You also get to choose your captain, and they each have different doctrines. These can grant you passive abilities, strange hull layouts, and even dirty tricks that get deployed in battles. These captains all steer the build in a specific direction, but it's still up to you exactly how to craft your, uh, craft.

You have the choice between fighting other player-made ships, seeing how big a win streak you can accrue before your lives run out. There is also a Pokémon Go-like feature where you dethrone a pirate lord and then collect rewards if your ship manages to best other would-be challengers.

Down with the Ship comes out in 2026, but if that's just too far away, you can download the demo on Steam to tide you over in the meantime.

Once you've faced your fair share of pirates, check out everything announced during the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted Powered by Xbox Game Pass.