Battlestar Galactica Scattered Hopes Review

Nothin’ but the rain.

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 at any moment.

I’m incredibly pleased to tell you that the new single-player roguelike Battlestar Galactica Scattered Hopes does an equally impressive job adapting the iconic series to the video game medium.

What’s funny about that though is that not only do you not control Galactica in Scattered Hopes. You don’t even control a Battlestar. Instead, you’re placed in the role of commander of a ‘Gunstar’, a smaller and less heavily armed military spaceship, and must successfully protect your vessel, its crew, and a small band of civilian ships across thirteen intergalactic sector jumps in order to unite with Galactica and the larger refugee fleet it shelters.

At the start of a run, you’re assigned a randomly generated trio of heroes representing your Executive Officer, Commander of the Air Group, and Deck Chief respectively, as well as two civilian ships who each possess support traits. Time spent in each sector comprises around 8 or so steps, with only a single key action able to be performed per step. Once the end of the step track is reached, a large enemy Cylon vessel shows up, forcing you into a real-time-with-pause battle leading directly into a flight onwards to the next sector.

If the health of the fleet’s population hits zero at any point, it’s game over. If the hull of your Gunstar is whittled down to zero, it’s game over. If you’ve got zero fuel to make the next jump by the time the Cylons show up again, you guessed it: game over.

The space combat side of Scattered Hopes, (which is awesome and we’ll get to later,) isn’t the only way in which any of these vital features can be critically impacted though. Maybe you’ve pissed off the workers faction so severely that they’ve started rioting. Maybe a viral infection has broken out due to overly cramped quarters. Maybe you’ve gone so long without making repairs or upgrades that key systems are simply breaking down.

Of course you’ll need to maintain a healthy supply of scrap which is vital for making those repairs and upgrades. You’ll also have to keep well stocked on supplies, which are chiefly required as payment to resolve situations if no hero character is available to do the job personally, but also are frequently needed to cover other expenses such as bribes and fees to the occasionally found merchants. Even your severely limited arsenal of nuclear missiles have their situational uses outside of being devastating weapons in space combat. Oh and your heroes also each have individual morale to be managed too.

Each of these can be maintained and recovered in a number of ways, but it’s all a trade-off. Maybe you’re low on fuel and scrap and one of the options presented to you for your next sector jump features points of interest that will allow you to top up on both. You know from the jump track in the lower-right corner that you’ve got 9 steps in this particular sector, and that unavoidable ‘crisis events’ will hit you on steps 4 and 6.

You decide to use your first action to siphon fuel from a drifting wreck, assigning a hero to do the task so as to not burn precious supplies and also to gain them a little XP. Dispatching a shuttle to exploit any point of interest burns 1 fuel in addition to the sole action point per sector of a hero or supplies cost, so it feels prudent to top the tank up first. A literally unignorable situation arises upon the start of your next step though where the underworld faction is demanding a bribe of scrap in payment for the medical supplies they offered you hours earlier. You’re unable to afford the cost, and your reputation with them lowers to ‘tense’, guaranteeing future problems from them until you can mend the relationship down the line.

Additional randomly generated heroes can be picked up during a run also. While having a larger pool grants more opportunities to resolve situations, crises, and points of interests without paying a supplies cost, (as well as allowing you to slot more into your fighters and weapon stations transferring their buffs and gaining XP in battles), doing so also means you’ll have more suspects to comb through when one inevitably turns out to be a Cylon sleeper agent. Everything is a trade-off and an imperfect compromise.

In amongst it all though, there is always hope. Maybe the military faction will become inspired and increase your weapon damage for a couple of sectors if a specific hero shoots down a lot of Cylons. Maybe you’ll even be able to convince a revealed Cylon hero to come back around to your side!

The aforementioned space combat is an isometric affair that operates on a ‘real-time with pause’ system. You individually command your fighters in the field as well as the weaponry on your Gunstar itself. End of sector battles require you to simply keep the Cylons at bay as best you can while the two minute jump clock ticks down, then making sure your fighters are safely back on board before your fleet frantically flees to the next sector. The steady ramp-up of the accompanying score amidst the soft crackle of gunfire heard as if relayed from the comms units of your pilots over to the bridge of your command deck is gloriously evocative, and the battle system itself is just plain fun.

Optional battle variations may arise mid-sector also. Perhaps you’ve found the opportunity to engage a Cylon capitol ship on *your* terms which guards a great prize. Perhaps you’ve received a distress signal and must evacuate people from a derelict while defending both it and your Gunstar from waves of invaders. Every twist on the formula is exciting and engaging, and is kept fresh by the often significant variations in your fleet and its armaments on each run.

Being a roguelike of course, there is progression.

Heroes and your Gunstar’s fleet of fighters can level up and earn powerful traits during a run, though none persist beyond the one you’re on. What does persist are buffs and boons purchased with ‘fate’ points at the end of each run, successful or otherwise. Increased starting resources, higher tier rewards for hero and fighter level-ups, re-rolls and even retries etc. Successful runs unlock increasingly challenging ‘extinction’ modifiers too, should you really wish to test yourself.

Battlestar Galactica Scattered Hopes is such a fascinating game to analyse so hot on the heels of Star Trek Voyager Across the Unknown too. While both are broadly similar in genre and mechanical structure, (as well as obviously each being based upon beloved science-fiction television shows), each game executes upon the assignment with wildly different philosophies for adaptation.

Where Across the Unknown gives you control of the titular ship and its cast of characters and allows you to retread or remix the exact plot beats of the show, Scattered Hopes through every aspect of its design operates as a work that’s there to support its parent work. Where Across the Unknown felt as if it were straining sorely against the limitations of its budget in terms of what it could license, Scattered Hopes feels as if it is relishing getting to play unobtrusively in a side-pocket of its IP’s fiction. 

Battlestar Galactica Scattered Hopes is a wonderfully engaging work in its own right on top of being one of the most holistically smart video game adaptations in history. I am tremendously impressed by it and cannot recommend it to fans of the series enough. Battlestar Galactica Scattered Hopes is available right now Windows PC via Steam.

Battlestar Galactica Scattered Hopes was reviewed using a promotional code on Windows PC via Steam, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.