Platform: PC
Genre: Strategy, Real-Time, Roguelite, Sci-Fi

2003’s reboot of Battlestar Galactica took the sci-fi spaceship-slash-invading cyborg concept and cranked it up to the nnth level, making for one of this generation’s most compelling episodic watches alongside other iconic shows like The Shield, Breaking Bad, and Buffy the Vampire Savior. It’s got drama, grit, an overwhelming sense of desolation and dread, and epic space battles, with all these elements taking creative risks for better or for worse.

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes takes all those key elements of the show and put it in a roguelite strategy package, fitting the theme and tone to a tee while delivering familiar-yet-fun gameplay for both newbies and veterans alike. And yes, it does work like Cylonwork.

Sleeper Agent & Hit?

In this Dotemu and Alt Shift-made game, you play as a lone Colonial Gunstar on a lam from pursuing Cylons while finding the precious promised land known as Earth and the titular Battlestar Galactica. Along the way, you may either pick up stranded colony ships that can help you, a ton of crises and opportunities to resolve as ship captain, and managing resources so that you’re not stranded or drop to zero hit points and die mid-run.

Like any roguelite, death is imminent as after every 10 turns, you fight a Cylon battleship or two equipped with unlimited missiles and fighter ships. You can’t kill them all, so your only option is to wait it out for 2 minutes or so, hold the fort, and then make a space jump after a minute or two has passed. Success means you get a few resources and level up points for your troubles, all the while getting thrust into new problems that require hard choices to make. If you come out of battle scarred and wrecked, your ship will get hit with fires you need to put out. You also will occassionally fight a boss who has better powers and advantages than you -like special targeting guns aimed at your strongest fighter, or even a barrage of nukes- but this kind of encounters means you’re on the right track to victory; just one that needs your attention and commanding skills.

The crux of Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is not just the fights, which are done in real-time hybrid style where you can pause and assign commands (ala Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series), but also the conversations and inter-ship conflict. There are many factions at play, and you can’t please them all. Favouring one over the other means you’ll get more trouble from the latter. For example, siding with the Military means better levels of order in the long run, but by doing so you piss off the Underworld more which means more “tax” and extra charges for supplies that you would have received for free. If you somehow manage to put out all crisis and issues, you can spend your turns generating resources or leveling up the crew so that less accidents can be avoided in the whole run. Let’s also not forget that the game will throw its other curveball: Cylon sleeper agents who infiltrate and attempt to blow up your main ship. Add all this and you have a huge juggling act at keeping your ship and fleet intact while worrying about the next battle.

Of course, the inevitable end will happen, but at least you get to keep a lot of knowledge to boost up the next fleet in your run, and the one after. In fact, repeated playthroughs of the roguelite does expose one major flaw: pretty soon, a lot of faction-bickering and Cylon-finding crises and events will start feeling a bit more familiar and rote. After 10+ hours or so, it gets to the point where the former surprises end up as problem-of-the-week TV tropes that you can sort out after being in tuned with its roguelite nature.

A Light In The Dark Of Space

For those who hold some love for sci-fi strategy games with long-lasting roguelite mechanics with a dollop of intrigue and space politics, Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hope is clearly for you. Its real-time-with-pause hybrid gameplay during its hectic combat setpieces are both fun and harrowing since you’re mostly going into it outnumbered. The “downtime” in-between combat rounds against the Cylon lets you plan out your next steps while sorting out upgrades and crises (or not), leading to you adapting or dying midway through your run.

Above all else, this is as close as you can get to an authentic portrayal of the hit 2003 scifi show, grit, desolation, and all. Alt Shift and Dotemu have the series justice in this fun-yet-tense roguelite, which is more than I can say for the TV series finale.

Final Score: 70/100

Review copy provided by publisher.