I keep reading people say 'roguelike'...wtf does that mean?
There was a great game called 'rogue'. It was a game where you went down levels in a dungeon to get an item, then go back up. If you got killed, the game was over; no save games. You could play the original for years without winning; most people did IMO. The term 'roguelike' originally referred to a genre of games that played like Rogue but expanded it. One was 'nethack'; and later there were a bunch that added a lot. They each kept the sort of 'ascii art' and moveement and similar gameplay.
Now the term in recent years has been applied to a lot of games that are more diffferent from the original roguelikes but still have some basic elements, especially the mechanism that the game ends and you have to restart when your char is killed. FTL has little in common with a lot of old roguelikes - except for the basics of a series of 'levels' and picking up 'loot' that helps.
So the term has gotten relatively loose and broad.
I still recommend people try the original which is free.
It's scarier than a lot of AAA horror titles. You've spent 90 minutes, gotten good armor, a good sword, and are very carefully taking one step as a time in a dark room on level 18, worried about runnng into a terrible monster that can kill you in one hit, but you have one potion that will randomly transform it - but it could make it even stronger... and you have two potions you don't know what they'll do. Do you take off your good armor in case you run into a rust monster that damages it? Same question for your good weapon? One of those potions could be a heal potion when you get damaged - or it could be a blindness potion so you will walk into any monster you encounter, which is very dangerous.
Similar with scrolls... there's a very useful and rare scroll that protects you from attack on one location if you drop it, but if you read it rather than using an identify scroll on it to see what scroll it is, it destroys it, and the game informs you you hear laughter as some force thinks it's hilarious you wasted it.
FTL is called roguelike because you do sequential 'levels' and find 'loot' - crew and items for your ship - but if any ship you run into destroys yours, game has to be restarted.
Those seem to be the three features stilll in the genre - random loot, random enemy encounters, having to start over/no save games to try again.