Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes

I’ve long held Corey Koniecska’s 2008 Battlestar Galactica board game as the absolute high watermark for game adaptations. It’s a masterwork of design where every one of its mechanics plays deftly into the tone and theme of the 2004 Syfy show that serves as its basis. Everything is stressful, nobody can be trusted, you’re frequently left with no better move than to compromise upon two or more abjectly bad options, and on top of all of that, a sudden intense crisis is likely to occur a...

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is a challenging space-based strategy outing that'll delight fans of the series and roguelike fans who appreciate having their spirits crushed.

Battlestar Galactica feels like an odd choice for a licensed tie-in game when the original series ended in 1980 and the rebooted series ended in 2010, but it also kinda…hangs around. The web series ran on SciFi’s website and then reappeared on Machinima (remember Machinima?) in 2012. There was a feature film kicking around in development/early production until 2016 or so. Peacock was planning some kind of reboot or revival that puttered along until 2024, when it was canceled. It’s alway...

Battlestar Galactica’s 2004 revival is one of my favourite TV series. Sure, it’s strange as heck through the later seasons, and you have to view its tone and creation through the lens of 9/11, the War on Terror, and how that shaped American culture through that decade, but its highest moments really were exceptional. Decades later, Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes takes that desperate flight that we saw through the first season of the show and uses it as inspiration for an original story that runs alongside.

Battlestar Galactica: Shattered Hopes faithfully recreates the feel of the show, with intense combat and interesting decision-making between dogfights.

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is a fantastic blend of both rougelite and RTS gameplay. Developers Alt Shift made a game that is packed to the brim with content, while at the same time not feeling too overwhelming. Suffering only slightly from the difficulty, this is an experience worth jumping into.

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes feels like a genuine, honest extension of the cult favorite 2004 television show. It perfectly captures the dark, unrelenting tone of hopelessness that the TV show became known for. The hectic space combat has a fun, brisk pace to it that never overstays its welcome, and it is brilliantly balanced by more human moments with the crew on your ship. It doesn't necessarily reinvent the wheel for the roguelite genre, but if you're a fan of the franchise, this is going to be a game that will make you quite happy.