I’d entirely forgotten about Battlestar Galactica. I wouldn’t say hearing the show’s melancholy singsong theme during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live gave me Proustian nostalgia pangs, but it did fill me with a vague desire to look up Gunstar mods for Homeworld.
The game announcement in question was for Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, a new tactical roguelite from the developers of Crying Suns. Published by Dotemu, it gives you quasi-isometric control of the human armada racing to escape the sinister Cylon fleet. You’ll divide your time between managing tensions aboard your ships via branching story beats, assigning limited upgrade resources, flushing out new vessels from the planets you visit, and fending off the perfidious toasters in real-time space combat. Here’s a trailer.
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It seems pretty standard-issue for a roguelike, and appropriately oppressive. Each run sees you navigating between planets and points of interest that harbour threats and opportunities. Every action you take within systems hastens the arrival of the Cylons. When they show up, you must keep them occupied for long enough to complete calculations for an FTL jump to the next sector. There’s a tactical pause to help you plot out manoeuvres. Other enemies may come from within: there are Cylons who can pose as humans, remember. It sort of makes me want to play a Battlestar-flavoured Among Us. Doubtless there’s a mod for that.
I think Crying Suns has a superior sense of atmosphere. I still find that game’s vast bridge viewing port quite magnetic, whereas Scattered Hopes feels more formulaic and Paradoxy in its visual direction. Still, I am always up for some fugitive fleet-building, particularly given the sad demise of Jumplight Odyssey and the wobbly fortunes of the Homeworld series of late. Battlestar’s relatively unglamorous, ‘low-tech’ ships are fun to think about, versus the borderline magical functionality of the fancier Star Treks.
Scattered Hopes is out Q1 2026 – late winter/early spring. Read more on Steam. If you think roguelikes are a terrible Cylon perversion, there’s also Slitherine’s much more Homeworldly Battlestar Galactica Deadlock from 2017. Moving away from the strategy genre, I’m chuffed to learn of an ancient Battlestar mod for Freespace 2.
Check out our Gamescom 2025 event hub for all the PC game announcements and preview coverage from Cologne.
