Space strategy game Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes has a demo out now

Battlestar Galactica is one of the best space sci-fi series around, and now you have a chance to explore more in Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes. A demo has just been published on Steam ahead of the full release sometime in Q2 2026.

Instead of repeating the events of the TV series, this sees you take command of a different fleet as you try to protect it against the Cylon threat in a rogue-lite setting so it's all a bit different each time you play through. There's going to be four different fleets available to play through in the full game, with the demo giving you a tutorial and a small slice of what to expect when playing with one of them.

They also recently put up a gameplay overview:

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Completely out-gunned constantly, Scattered Hopes is a game of survival as you repeatedly jump between locations while making various decisions that could result in some pretty big changes to your run each time. It's a fair bit like the excellent classic FTL: Faster Than Light in that way. It's supposed to be difficult, and give you choices that you won't always like and you won't always be able to save everyone. You have to make the most of a bad situation with this one.

Gameplay is split between two major parts: fleet management and the real-time battles. Fleet management has you deal with all the issues that come up, with the game constantly pinging things that need your attention for you to make decisions between things. While the combat is pretty tense and challenging, with you often completely overwhelmed so you have to make good use of the tactical pause that's available.

You don't really need to know anything about Battlestar to enjoy it, but it certainly helps.

Testing it myself, the demo works perfectly with Proton 10 on Linux. If you're a fan of Battlestar, or just enjoy space strategy games - this could one for you.