Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes by developer
Alt Shift and
published by Dotemu—PC (Steam) review written by Hayden with a
copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated
reading time: 9 minutes
Battlestar Galactica in all its incarnations has been part of the
bedrock of Western science fiction for nearly half a century. Alt
Shift’s newest entry Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes aims to
capture the franchise’s feeling of courage in the face of
relentless pursuit and overwhelming odds, and it does it well. While
placing the player in command of a Gunstar (think mini-Battlestar)
that has more limited resources and capabilities than the titular
ship of the show, it balances that against foes appropriate for the
scaling to good effect. As you try to hold off waves of attackers
long enough for your handful of ships to escape, the game has you
counting down the seconds until you can jump to safety, while trying
to make sure that you don’t leave anyone behind.
Graphically, Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes draws on the
aesthetics of the 2004 reimagining of the franchise, with the vaguely
horseshoe-shaped Cylon Raiders leading the charge to try to end your
little chunk of humanity. Battles have ships and weapons fully
animated, while between-battle scenes use a vignette style of art as
you navigate around. From thruster flares to nebula clouds and slowly
rotating planets, down to onboard fires and dozens of unique
character portraits, Alt Shift have picked out the essential pieces
of the franchise to make Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes feel
alive.
Gameplay in Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes separates in two
main areas: real time (pausable) combat, and fleet management. The
player’s overall goal is to survive long enough that their handful
of ships can regain the Battlestar Galactica and its main fleet - to
do that, however, requires balancing combat performance actively
destroying incoming ships with non-combat decisions that determine
what resources are available at a given time. When combat starts,
you’ll find yourself watching the timer count down until you can
jump away from the numerically superior enemy. When you’re in
between combats, you’ll be trying to figure out the best way to use
your limited time and resources to repair and improve before the next
combat round find you again. Oh, and you’ll be trying to balance
relations with political factions within the fleet, responding to
emerging crisis points, and trying to balance whether paying the
costs to resolve an issue today is worth the opportunity costs of
forgoing an upgrade or taking a penalty for a few jumps.
Within the combat sequences of Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes,
the player’s Gunstar is always anchored in the bottom left of the
screen, and the Cylon capital ship anchoring the attack is always in
the top right. Accompanying your Gunstar will be two of your half
dozen civilian support ships, and between your Gunstar’s onboard
weapons and up to three units of combat craft you need to keep
everyone alive. A central trope of the franchise is that the
attacking Cylons will overwhelm the defenders given enough time, so
all combats have a timer counting down. When it completes after a few
minutes, your fleet can jump away for another short stint of safety.
But wait, there’s more! Your combat craft (fighters, etc.) can’t
jump, so you need to get them back on board before you leave, and
while you do that they aren’t shooting down enemy craft or
intercepting missiles. You do have some weapons on the Gunstar to
help, but these aren’t generally constantly active or able to cover
everywhere at once, so you have to choose when and where to deploy
them for best effect.
Overall, the combat sequences in Battlestar Galactica: Scattered
Hopes feel very well tuned to creating a sense of urgency that creeps
up on you. In any given one-on-one matchup, your combat craft will
generally be able to deal with an opposing Cylon unit with minimal
difficulty. Of course, those Cylon units are rarely alone, and the
area in which they can approach your fleet to attack your Gunstar or
the civilian ships is large enough that you will rarely feel that you
have every angle covered. And then they start coming in bigger
groups with support vessels that hang back to shoot while you
deal with the closest ones first. And then the capital ship starts
firing missiles that need to be intercepted. Now your jump timer
is about to go off and its POP QUIZ, HOTSHOT - you’ve got two
squadrons of your best pilots still fighting in space that will be
destroyed if you leave them behind and half a dozen enemy units and a
missile coming that will hit your ships if you stick around long
enough to dock your fighters. WHAT DO YOU DO?
The moment you jump away, the entire pace of Battlestar Galactica:
Scattered Hopes changes. There is no timer, not real-time action that
needs to be dealt with. Your panic and adrenaline can subside, and
instead you are confronted with the other half of the game - fleet
management. Every system you jump into will have a number of points
of interest that can be explored or exploited for resources, crisis
and decisions that affect your ships, and a limited number of turns
available to do them in. You can take your time deciding, however, as
there isn’t anything forcing your hand during this phase at least.
Also available during this phase is the ability to upgrade your
ships, configure and improve your combat craft, buy and sell from
traveling traders or isolated stations you encounter, and have
conversations with your command staff and trusted people in the
fleet. This is also when your civilian ships become more than just
dead weight to be protected, as they generate the supplies and
material needed to repair and upgrade.
All is rarely well in your little fleet, however from breakdowns on
ships never meant to be away from maintenance this long to conflicts
among the various factions of people in your fleet, there’s almost
always something to grab your attention. Should an empty cargo bay be
turned over to your pilots and marines for R&R after risking
their lives fighting the Cylons, or should the space be turned into a
makeshift hospital to help keep everyone healthy? Should you divert
resources to rebuilding an area damaged by a fire immediately, or
accept degraded performance while maintenance restores it bit by bit?
Different groups will gain or lose influence depending on your
decisions, and the overall health and maintenance of the fleet might
be impacted as well. The long term implications start to add up -
sending in the marines when you heard about a black market ring now
means that the remaining black marketeers are starting to work
against you, while the military now has more influence and control
over fleet operations day to day. I’m sure that’s fine though,
right? I mean, what could go wrong with having the military in
control of key points throughout your fleet when you need to decide
on their next special request? Navigating through decisions and
balancing faction opinion and influence becomes some of your main
concerns during these non-combat phases,
At the heart of resolving crisis, leading your forces, and
investigating points of interest in Battlestar Galactica: Scattered
Hopes are your command staff. Notable people, civilian and military
alike, they bring their skills and experience to give you options.
Some will excel when used in dangerous negotiations, shifting the
odds in your favour or eliminating the worse outcome options
altogether. Others will excel in leading your combat craft or acting
as crew for systems on your Gunstar, making things move faster, hit
harder, and generally trying to tilt the balance of power in your
favour. Unfortunately, Cylons can look like humans, and so you’ll
also have to balance the paranoia in your fleet with the possibility
that one or more of your staff are enemies in disguise. If you do
find a Cylon agent, however, would you toss them out the airlock?
Keep them for questioning? Trust that they still have control of
their own actions and let them roam free? Resolving these dilemmas
have impacts on morale and crew performance, beyond the direct impact
of potentially losing a person you’ve come to count on, and invite
you to look beyond the lens of video game into the core questions of
‘what is humanity / what makes someone human’ that the Battlestar
Galactica franchise as a whole wrestled with.
As a rogue-like, Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is built
around the idea that what you do during each playthrough can help you
on your next playthrough. Each battle you win accumulates Fate points
that can be used to unlock upgrades, resources and generally improved
starting conditions for future runs through the game. As a result,
it's easy to feel overwhelmed on your first run, as you are at the
weakest you will ever be. Don’t despair - survive as long as you
can, and come back stronger.
Overall, Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is a game that
captures the feeling of the Battlestar Galactica universe, and keeps
itself grounded by limiting the player to a small piece of it. This
isn’t a game about endless resource gathering and giant fleets,
it's a game about the more personal struggle to survive against all
odds. Be prepared for combat sequences that will get your stress
levels up, and non-combat interludes that make you really think about
where every resource is best spent. The space battles are graphically
appealing, and the static character art outside of combat works to
convey what it needs to, while not distracting from the choices it is
asking the player to make. It might not hold my attention for
hundreds of hours, but there is quite a bit of replayability here,
and it is well worth your time.
Score: 9 / 10
