\n The bleak, dramatic sci-fi series \"Battlestar Galactica\" is more than two decades old, but indie video game \"Shattered Hopes\" has yanked some fans back into action defending a makeshift human fleet against genocidal Cylon raiders.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alarms blare and space fighters scramble from docking bays to keep attacking craft away from vulnerable civilian transports.\n<\/p>\n
\n Players must issue frantic orders to protect the rag-tag flotilla of humanity's remnants against everything from bombers to nuclear missiles, as a timer counts down until they can escape in a faster-than-light jump.\n<\/p>\n
\n The scenario is drawn straight from the initial episodes of the 2004 \"Battlestar Galactica\" TV series, which drew acclaim as a dark, character-driven reboot of the flashy and superficial 1978 original series.\n<\/p>\n
\n The later \"Battlestar\" was \"one of the first big American series, a bit more complex and rich,\" said Julien Cotret, co-founder of French development studio Alt Shift.\n<\/p>\n
\n There was also \"an indie approach, including the resources they had, and that matched well with our indie DNA,\" he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alt Shift put together \"Shattered Hopes\" with a dozen-strong team backed up by just a few freelancers, chief executive Frederic Lopez said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Montpellier-based company secured the \"Battlestar\" license almost by accident, he said, after mentioning it as an ambition in passing as they pitched a different game to publishers.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the franchise had already spurred one of their previous titles, \"Crying Suns\", which was inspired by the same last-ditch space defence scenario.\n<\/p>\n
\n Making a \"Battlestar\" game true to the 2004 series was \"a great dream of ours, and we never really imagined we'd get to work on it,\" Cotret said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alt Shift's game falls into the \"roguelite\" genre, in which players build up experience and gain more powerful abilities over a \"run\" lasting a few hours, pitting them against increasingly difficult challenges.\n<\/p>\n
\n No two runs should be the same, with branching narrative events designed to be different each time and music that adapts to the changing conditions in the battlespace.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Every time you make a choice (in the game), that feeds into more or less hidden variables... you get the sense that the fleet is alive and responsive to your choices,\" Cotret said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The game has largely won over reviewers since its May 11 release, notching up a 77 percent average score on review aggregator Metacritic, while fans have left mostly positive reviews on PC games platform Steam.\n<\/p>\n
\n Nevertheless, \"it's quite an ambitious game, so we'll need a fair few players to turn a profit,\" Lopez said, without naming a figure.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The advantage of the licence is that it gives us visibility we wouldn't necessarily have without it, so that lets us reach fans and it works in our favour.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The bleak, dramatic sci-fi series \"Battlestar Galactica\" is more than two decades old, but indie video game \"Shattered Hopes\" has yanked some fans back into action defending a makeshift human fleet against genocidal Cylon raiders. Alarms blare and space fighters scramble from docking bays to keep attacking craft away from vulnerable civilian transports. Players must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-159470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n