Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes

Battlestar Galactica is one of the best science-fiction series ever made. This is why I was delighted to try out Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, as it's a game that aims to capture the best of its TV counterpart. Just like in the series, it all begins with the planets being attacked and gradually destroyed by the Cylon AI race, where these super-intelligent machines have previously waged war against the 12 colonies comprising "humanity".

This title is developed as a roguelite and follows a spaceship being hunted across the galaxy by its enemy. We start from the same premise as the modern TV series, though we don't have access to the same advanced weapon systems and spaceships. Instead, we have smaller warships and our goal is both to survive and to gather the remnants of our allies, where in practice, it's a setup that takes place in phases. You fight in one phase and repair, develop, issue orders and so on in the other phase, and these alternate with one another. If you've just fought the Cylons who've found you and jumped to safety, you have a certain number of points/actions to use before they find you again, leading to a combat phase where the aim is to survive so you can jump to the next system. It's a game loop that's simple but works well.

The combat phase is in real-time with a pause function, and it's a fairly small-scale skirmish with few spaceships and abilities under your control. It's somewhat reminiscent of how certain mobile games work and this makes it easier for you to position yourself, manoeuvre, and hold out until you can make a jump to a new solar system. I like this setup; it's just chaotic enough that you remain in control and just challenging enough that you don't get lost in the game mechanics. Our goal is to survive, not to defeat the enemy, and I think Alt Shift has got it right, as the challenge builds gradually with tougher enemy ships and greater variety in what's thrown at you. As the game progresses, you can upgrade and train your pilots to gain more abilities in combat, where one strategy I adopted early on was to acquire as many hero characters as I could, so that I had greater freedom in how I fought and the bonuses they provided for solving problems on board the spaceship. For example, a character can repair things for free without spending an action.

The second phase is the classic "sort out a couple of the problems you're facing". You usually have crises on board, and far more than you can resolve before the next battle, and you must choose and spend your hard-earned resources wisely. This is just as difficult as in other similar titles such as FTL, as you must live with limited capabilities and weaknesses. It can be likened to a balancing act where you choose what you'll be slightly worse at during the next battle and you are forced to prioritise whether to have less health because you need to prioritise weapon resources or something else you require.

Variation comes in the form of the enemy mothership, which provides different bonuses to battles, environments that may contain hazards, and characters that are randomly generated on each playthrough. There are also certain abilities that you cannot unlock in a single playthrough. Unfortunately, after just two or three replays, it becomes apparent that the content isn't varied enough before you start seeing the same events, situations, and much more. In a roguelite, this is a worrying problem. It must be said, however, that the content that is there is well-made, especially the slightly longer mission chains and when you have to search for a Cylon aboard your crew who is pretending to be one of your own but with a human appearance.

If you enjoyed the TV series and, above all, the roguelite genre, this is a competent game despite its lack of variety. Although it's nowhere near as good as Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, it's still one of the best games bearing the franchise's name. Visually, it's quite primitive, but thanks to the zoomed-out perspective, it still looks perfectly acceptable, as it has a somewhat pixelated look when you get close to the spaceships. From a distance, the colours pop and it looks decent, and the character portraits during conversations are also good. It feels as though you're part of the Battlestar Galactica TV series when playing this. The music, however, is the star of the show, thanks to tracks reminiscent of the 2004 series.

Apart from a couple of minor technical issues with text, I haven't encountered any major problems. We live in an age where many games are released in a rather buggy state, and this is not one of them. Rather, the game runs smoothly on various hardware and works straight away when you start it up. Although sound and effects are sparse, explosions, alarms, and other sounds come across as a bit vague and fail to deliver the franchise's iconic sounds. Thanks to the fact that it replicates its source material, the music is perhaps the best thing about the game, as there is a musical style unique to the Battlestar universe and that is captured here. Unfortunately, the rest of the soundscape doesn't have the same strong Battlestar identity.

If you like FTL-style games set in the Battlestar Galactica universe, this is a perfectly acceptable game. It has issues with repetitive content, and mechanically speaking, it's simple, with a focus on surviving as long as possible rather than defeating all enemies. Although I'm not quite as keen on this setup as the one we saw in Deadlock, it's still a title worth checking out if it sounds appealing. There aren't many games that manage to draw inspiration from FTL and still be worthy titles in this genre, and if you're keen on decent alternatives within roguelites, have a soft spot for Battlestar Galactica, and want to experience the nightmare the crew in the TV series had to endure, I think you should check out this game.