Ryan McCaffrey
Guest
Battlestar Galactica has become one of the lost classics in the modern sci-fi canon. We live in an era of constant reinterpolation—new Star Wars serials churn from Disney every quarter, and Star Trek is consistently made flush with new content—but if you weren't watching television in the mid-2000s, there's a good chance you completely missed this heady tale of survival and humanity that once dominated the discourse. And in that sense, Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is the first breath of new life into the franchise in more than a decade. The game doesn't attempt to be the long-awaited expansion of the continuity, but from what I've played so far, it does make a valiant effort to replicate why people fell in love with this universe in the first place.
Scattered Hopes is, basically, a turn-based roguelike, set in a galaxy that is especially apt for the genre. If you're unfamiliar with Battlestar Galactica, the story follows the last remnants of humanity that have had their galaxy-spanning empire wiped out by a superpowered fleet of sentient robots known as the Cylons. With no home to return to, the survivors hurtle through space in a massive warship—the Galactica in question—in permanent transit, hoping to someday come across the fabled homeworld of Earth. Scattered Hopes essentially shrinks down this premise. Instead of trying to find a new Eden, you're piloting a couple of junkers that are attempting to track down the Galactica and join the convoy. As such, you'll spend much of your time in space shoring up all sorts of different logistical crises. Do we have enough fuel? Enough supplies? Is morale too low? Do our fighter ships need repairs? All those questions must be addressed before the Cylons appear on the horizon, launching an attack on your ragtag armada, which must be fended off while charging up a faster-than-light drive, in order to jump to the next sector.
The action brings to mind FTL, perhaps the greatest of all space-faring roguelikes. Scattered Hopes oscillates between white-knuckle tension when the Cylons demonstrate their incredible force, but much of your time in this game will be oddly dulcet. Tech trees will be dutifully filled out with upgrades, providing more fighters, better medbays, and tougher hull exteriors. Lonely travellers cross our paths, and join forces. Staff level up, and develop new traits. This is all rendered in a beautiful semi-retro pixelated style. The ships look great, but I'm especially taken by the dank, gritty interiors—the slate-grey hanger bay, the tech lab glowing with computer screens. Battlestar Galactica might be a dystopia, but it has also always been a spaceship I wanted to explore. Scattered Hopes captures that in spades.
Even more importantly, Scattered Hopes does its best to inject some legitimate narrative tension into what is, ultimately, a procedurally generated adventure. For instance: At one point you may be alerted by a lieutenant that the air filtration systems on your ship are on the fritz. Once it's repaired, you have the choice of either reprimanding the workers who installed those faulty mechanisms, or blame the underworld traders for providing bad materials. Your choice will alter your personal reputation with either of those factions—there are gameplay consequences at play—but they also add a splash of color to the run. An apt comparison might be Frostpunk, another game that melds horrific humanitarian catastrophes with nuts-and-bolts optimization.
When the Cylons come, as they always do, Scattered Hopes pivots from being a turn-based management sim into a straight-up real-time strategy game. The onslaught almost mirrors a tower defense set-up. You'll be fielding a small handful of fighters—ideally piloted by a curated selection of aces—who must fend off the assault for a specific amount of time. The Cylons all tend to make a beeline for the heart of the armada, laying waste to your few civilian ships. So, expert captains will put their fighters in position to create something of a chokepoint, letting them mow down the Cylons upon entry. (One of the few advantages we're given as players is knowledge of where the enemies are going to spawn from.)
When the Cylons come, as they always do, Scattered Hopes pivots from being a turn-based management sim into a straight-up real-time strategy game.
However, what the Cylons lack in brains they more than make up for in scale, and the deeper you get into a run, you'll start facing down some insurmountable odds. That's when the flagships come in. They're outfitted with both tactical heat-seeking missiles and board-clearing nukes that glitter in the void and vaporize everything within the blast radius. The action can get pretty technical, and extremely overwhelming. Engagements can be won or lost if players are a split-second late on an important maneuvering decision. When things get out of hand, Cylons can absolutely melt the health bars of your most important assets. Thankfully, Scattered Hopes does offer a real-time combat pause, letting you mete out orders deliberately, without being constantly under fire. To play the game correctly, you'll likely be tapping that space bar every other second.
At the end of combat you'll quickly scurry the fighters back to their docking ports and blast off to the next zone, with a collection of fresh bullet holes left in your hull. More crises will pop up, more repairs will need to be completed, and when the Cylons return, they will almost certainly be more dangerous than before. The thing my time with Scattered Hopes seemed most eager to hammer home is that this is a difficult video game—beholden to plenty of good RNG, as roguelikes always are, but also your own management chops. Battlestar Galactica, after all, is a franchise all about doing just enough to stay alive for another day. Scattered Hopes is eager to honor that legacy. I'm hoping it can pull it off.