The 2004 revival of Battlestar Galactica is one of my favorite television series. Sure, it’s as weird as it gets throughout the final season, and one has to view its tone and creation through the prism of 9/11, the War on Terror, and how that shaped American culture during this decade, but its highest moments were truly exceptional – I regularly rewatch the escape from New Caprica. Decades later, Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes takes that desperate flight we saw during the show’s first season and uses it as inspiration for an original story that runs parallel to it.
You take command of a lone Colonial Gunstar, gathering your own small civilian fleet and seeking to find and encounter the Battlestar Galactica. Of course, just like Galactica, you will be continually hunted by Cylons who will find your location, forcing you to fight rearguard action while queuing up your FTL drives. Not to do it? It’s back to the start in this roguelite, to try again with another ship.
These combat sequences are short and sweet 2-minute defensive missions that are the most addictive part of the game. Usually, with a Cylon frigate in the opposite corner of the screen from your gunship and a few civilian ships, you send in squadrons of fighters and support ships and use your Gunstar’s weapons on cooldown to quickly take out the Cylon fighters that appear and the missiles that are fired at you. These play out in real-time with pause, so you can stop and adjust, micromanage, and make that perfectly timed jump just as the FTL goes live.
Aside from the Viper fighter, Raptor support ship, as well as the Cylon Raider and Heavy Raider, there are many original creations to add variety to this game. The Viper Mk. 2 is a shorter-range ship than the Mk. 7, while the Raptor can be available in various configurations for long-range artillery or closer jamming support, and there are other faster or more evasive fighters that all have a role to play. play. The stakes stack up against you over the course of a race, with Cylons appearing in the form of snipers, shielding and shielding supports, minelayers and much more. Additionally, the opposing Gunstar or ship can bring its own combat modifiers, spit minefields, deflect any Colonial Missiles that get too close, and much more. These only become more imposing when life-size base stars and a handful of humanoid Cylons appear for boss fights.
You may be able to get through the first few sectors with relative ease, but it won’t be long before you have to lick your wounds between encounters. Jumping to a new sector buys you time before the Cylons respawn, but now you have all the pressures of managing the fleet population, repairing and upgrading, and even tracking down saboteurs.
In addition to raw resources, there is time to devote and carefully manage between battles. Outside of R&D and squadron repairs and upgrades, almost everything will take time, whether it’s repairing critical damage after a ship has taken a few too many hits, gathering resources for nearby planets, wrecks, and stations, or dealing with narrative puzzles and full-blown crises. You quickly start to run out of time, just as much as you run out of scrap metal or Tylium fuel.
I love how these story beats capture the mood of the characters and arcs of the TV series, and also revolve around your decisions. Decision points appear regularly, such as deciding whether the army is able to lock down a dock for workers to use, and these strengthen or diminish factions, potentially giving you a bonus objective or leading to fallout from malcontents. This then shapes the type of crisis you will inevitably face, forcing you to either accept a handicap in a few areas or devote time and resources to countering the problem.
This is in addition to the full reveal that there is a secret Cylon on board – shocker! – sabotage and plant explosives throughout the fleet. This opens a new investigation section where you can gather information sector by sector, as well as collect clues and hear gossip in the bar so you can investigate further. During this time, you must divert resources and use your heroes to defuse the bombs that appear periodically.
It’s a balancing act of giving yourself lots of things to do, but never enough time or opportunity to do them all, always keeping you behind. Even the order in which you complete tasks between battles can be the key to success, reserving the unique action point each hero has and certain POIs, which can be useful for triggering the sub-objectives of a crisis.
Chances are you won’t reach the Galactica fleet on the first try, but that’s what the roguelite metagame is for, allowing you to accumulate destiny on a run which is then spent on a variety of stat boosts and bonus starting resources. You also have a handful of different Gunstars to play with, each with their own stats and race objectives that can provide stat boosts and additional abilities. A slight shame is that the isometric pixel art scenes don’t change from ship to ship, so the CIC always looks the same, whereas in the TV series there was a dramatic difference between the old Galactica and the futuristic Pegasus.
I also think there may not be as much resistance here with the roguelite form. Part of this is simply because a run can take you a few hours, making it closer to a full strategy campaign, where action-genre roguelites are inherently a bit snappier. However, there is also a certain repetition of crises and “of the week” problems that occur in each sector. It’s not necessarily in terms of exact storylines – although I’ve seen a few repeated, including some personal stories – but when it comes down to a choice between faction feuding or the process of eliminating Cylons in your ranks, it’s definitely familiar after the second time.
