The China Mail - Indie game plunges players into sci-fi epic 'Battlestar Galactica'

Alarms blare and space fighters scramble from docking bays to keep attacking craft away from vulnerable civilian transports.

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.

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.

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.

There was also "an indie approach, including the resources they had, and that matched well with our indie DNA," he added.

Alt Shift put together "Shattered Hopes" with a dozen-strong team backed up by just a few freelancers, chief executive Frederic Lopez said.

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.

But the franchise had already spurred one of their previous titles, "Crying Suns", which was inspired by the same last-ditch space defence scenario.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

"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."

T.Wu--ThChM