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I'm running out of fuel. Two of the ships in my fleet are actively on fire. Workers are rising up in protest against my actions as captain. One of my most trusted advisors is probably an enemy in disguise. And worst of all, the Cylon fleet is about to be on us and we barely have the resources to ready our defenses.
These are the kinds of situations you'll find yourself facing in Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, a strategic roguelike from developer Alt Shift and publisher Dotemu that puts you in the middle of the high-stakes conflicts of the classic TV series. At its heart, it's a game about resource management – but those resources are packaged in a narrative wrapper that makes every choice feel life or death.
I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with Scattered Hopes ahead of its reveal as part of Gamescom Opening Night Live, and even with a pretty casual relationship to the classic sci-fi series it's based on, I found myself captivated by its strategic choices and the way its blend of roguelike trappings and narrative threads give each run a genuinely desperate feel.
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Scattered Hopes puts you in command of a handful of ships that have been separated from the main fleet and are desperately trying to make it back to the Battlestar Galactica. You start with a big capital vessel and a handful of civilian ships, a few resources like supplies, fuel, and scrap, and a small group of named VIPs representing your core officers and advisors.
You'll spend most of your time making decisions about where to allocate your people and resources, as a turn counter ticks down with each action. Each VIP can be used for a single task, like gathering supplies from a nearby planet or calming growing unrest on one of your ships. You can also spend resources to do these things, but that means you'll have less scrap to repair and upgrade your fleet, or fewer supplies to trade for new ships and other boosts in certain star systems.
This flow will occasionally be interrupted by a "situation" – an event where you're pulled into a room and a few VIPs ask you how to deal with, say, an underworld faction's request to move more freely around your fleet, or the military's request to crack down on rioting workers. These decisions affect not just your reputation with the factions, but also their influence over your fleet, and if – or rather, when – you fail to properly balance those factors, the situations will start escalating into big, multi-stage events that are going to place you under a substantial penalty until you spend the resources and VIP actions necessary to resolve it.
At a glance, it seems like there are a lot of interlocking systems here, but it pretty quickly becomes easy to keep track of it all – though it's certainly not so easy to make sure all your resources are being used in a way that'll keep your ships from breaking down or preventing the factions from rioting. I spent the early parts of my run trying to balance the requests of my workers and military, and this milquetoast, middle-of-the-road approach quickly turned into riots, bomb threats, and a constant need to put out fires both figurative and literal.
Cylon my wayward son
Once you've run out of turns, you've got to make your jump to the next system before the Cylon fleet can stop you. Here, Scattered Hopes changes from a turn-based resource management game to a hybrid of tower defense and real-time strategy. Your fleet needs a couple of minutes to successfully calculate the jump to the next star system, and you've got to defend your ships from waves of incoming Cylon fighters long enough to escape.
You get a quick preview of the Cylon ships coming through in each wave – perhaps small fighters that rush in to attack close up, or snipers that can hit you from a distance – and you need to position your vessels to intercept them. Each ship type has its own firing range, so you can play rock-paper-scissors with engagement distances to keep the Cylon forces in check.
The action here is real-time with pause, and you need to take advantage of the option to stop the action to have any hope of making it through the overwhelming odds. This side of the game is simple, but satisfying, especially as it ties back into the tactical layer. Your VIPs can also pilot your fighters, giving them additional bonuses in battle, but they're also at risk of injury or death if the fight goes badly, and resources you might prefer to spend on upgrading your fleet might be necessary to repair your defense force.
I'm impressed by how well it works together, and how compelling the gradual escalation of very bad things happening on your fleet can make each run. I felt like I'd been through a harrowing season of television by the time the Cylons finally became too much for me. The VIP who'd been with me from the start was on the verge of death thanks to too many close calls in combat, and after one bad skirmish I recalled her squadron – only for the Cylons to push the advantage, break through my civilian defenders, and ravage my capital ship, putting an end to my campaign.
If I'd put more resources into ship upgrades early, maybe I could've fought them off. If I'd had more fuel, I might've been able to escape the battle before things went bad. If I'd responded better to the workers, I might not have had riots draining my resources at every turn. And I never did figure out who the secret Cylon was lurking among my VIPs, building bombs and sowing chaos.
The fact that Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes can keep me asking these questions long after a failed run suggests that the foundations are here for something great. I have a few concerns – notably whether the narrative-driven situations will grow repetitive on successive runs – but a pre-release build of a game not due out until 2026 won't give a great sense of what to expect there. In the meantime, I'm planning my next captaincy to make sure the Cylons won't stand a chance.
Time will tell if Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes can join the ranks of the best roguelike games.
