Project Announcement, Free Demo & Narrative BTS: 'Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes'

 

It's been some time. So it goes (I'm re-reading Slaughterhouse-5, top ten books of all time IMO). But now I have a new project to announce!

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is (in my words, not the marketing department's) a narrative-forward TBS with pausable, tactical-scale RTS combat, which takes its cues from FTL, Reigns, Asteroids and, of course, developer Alt Shift's own Crying Suns.

In fact, they have just published a handy narrative BTS over on Steam.

I was consulting on this one through the early design phase, in addition to contributing a handful of text events.

What I argue is cool about Scattered Hopes is the design of the basic systems around the core vibes of the TV show, instead of trying to smash a triangle peg into a quadrilateral hole. Combat aside the core game loop is worker management, but as in the show every decision has potential to trigger a cascading sequence of deeper narrative and mechanical crises, each of which can interact in both directions with the personalities, wellbeing, capabilities and interpersonal dramas of your named crewmembers; not to mention the relative strengths and behaviours of the military, criminal and civilian factions onboard.

I'm proudest however of the Cylon system. I jumped on this design task early doors because it's obviously the coolest thing, and although the final version is most definitely the work of the core team I don't think I lie when I say it bears non-zero similarity to my original vision.

Here's the necessary conditions of an authentic Cylon system I laid out on day one, back in May 2023:

• Discovering a Cylon's identity (or missing important clues) should be a thing

• Cylons are always Cylons, NPCs don't get their histories rewritten when a Cylon event triggers

• Undiscovered Cylons on your ship is bad, discovering them is good/exciting/dangerous

• Interrogating Cylons is a thing

• Not all Cylons are murder-machines, some are smart and strategic, some are friendly to humans

I went on to describe a system wherein 'You can arrest and interrogate an NPC at any time'; 'Connected events can trigger at any stage (the prisoner's lover could break them loose and steal a viper)'; and ultimately:

This system is about gambling insight into an NPC’s trustworthiness against all sorts of unpredictable negative effects[...] but never really knowing who you can trust.

I believe the final system delivers on all of this, albeit in a more implementable form than whatever crazy shit this writer dreamed might be programmable.

Grats to the team at Alt Shift, to writers Martin Ringot and Anthony Jauneaud, and you, the discerning public, for the remarkable achievement of being able to download the demo right this second, and play the full game in Q2 this year.

What's Been Happening 2025 & Other Minutiae

Obligatory two-yearly update.

After crashing out from Subnautica Below Zero (I have a whole blog post just about that, but I'm saving it until I found out if Unknown Worlds is really going to make a Subnautica movie off the back of my characters and plot without crediting me for the original story) I took a couple years off, then I took a little consulting gig with a UK indie.

That consulting gig turned into a three year narrative design lead position on the most incredibly exciting FPSRPG set in a Hot Fuzz vibes Welsh farmpunk world tearing itself apart over god and AI (I know, original). 

I loved it, I did so much writing of a flavour and variety I never got to exercise before. I loved my characters. There was a posh boy who can be redeemed or tortured comically, and a hot welsh magic priest who curses you to throw up when you try to talk to her, and a village defence laser with a targeting system that runs on chickens, and a whole religion based on 1990s computer instruction manuals, and a tough as nails police chief who ever-so-slightly warms to you over time, and so on. I wrote hundreds of thousands of words.

And from the day I took the job I knew it was a 50:50 gamble.

Friends, my gamble did not pay off.

Now I am back to taking my couple of years off.

Aside, naturally, and if it ever occurs, from Talos Principle 3, of which, if it did exist, my small part might begin like this (MID-LEVEL SPOILERS FOR A HYPOTHETICAL ART PRODUCT WHICH DOESN'T YET EXIST AFTER THE BREAK):

2023 Update

It has been a long time.

Life is wild.

I'll limit this post to factual updates.

Talos 2 did great critically and I fear abysmally commercially. I'm so proud of Jonas, Verena, Hunski, Tome, Kuber, Goran, Damjan and everyone else and especially Moss. And I'm glad I did what I did (a subplot probably <1% of the total word count); and a bit sorry I didn't do more. Some people vibed with my stuff, and some people recognised it was underdeveloped. I'm sure some did both (I certainly did).

The team are working on small DLCs. I would like to add some new 'Internal Monolog' character to those, but I am not sure whether Jonas will find a space for me to do it. If not then I hope Devolver will not go under and we will make Talos 3.

A couple years ago I took a job I shouldn't have because it's too big and long for me, but it's a really cool RPG world that I want to stretch my legs in before I go back to smaller things. Hopefully we announce next year.

Besides that I seriously hope Inner Party - the indie studio I co-founded with Jonas Boetel (Subnautica programmer) and Warby (brilliant technical artist) will get off the ground. Either they will find a prototype that sells and I'll add writing; or I'll finish this RPG and we'll do it together. Making games with those guys is my absolute number one dream.

I continue to take my twitter to ever more performative heights. I am glad to have the professional freedom to print whatever wild experimental ideas I like on there and still have a job afterwards. Although it does start to blur the line between created-character and self-identity. I'd rather keep the two entirely separate, or totally entwined. We're all characters, after all.

I have spent a good deal of the last two years going down rabbit holes. Morality, de facto power, global dynamics, honesty vs utility, non-human intelligence and AGI, faith and the occult, god and the devil. Interesting stuff to me right now. The challenge is balancing research with production.

I am also stepping into very new phases in my personal life. But that is not to be factually stated, instead it'll be there codified in everything I do.

Life is very strange. I find big parts of it change a lot - and big parts stay the same. Increasingly I understand what's going on, but not exactly in what way.

I started this blog and this career inspired by the writers who bared their souls so that I could learn from them. Increasingly I wish I could undergo my personal changes without their being public - but I am too lazy to start my career again from scratch as an anon, and too in need of purpose not to share my experience at all. Still, like a politician caught on hotmike saying what they really think, I'm aware from the outside it might seem terribly inconsistent.

Cliche I know, but for good reason: if my words can help just one person as others' words have helped me then all is well in my world.

And remember...

Reading is just staring at marked slices of wood for hours while hallucinating vividly.

Twitter Game Chapter 1 Complete - I Need YOU

Hi okay so. It took about 4 months when I planned about 4 weeks, but the first episode of my Twitter RPG is complete!

You can catch up on the entire story right here: https://twitter.com/TomJubert/status/1294393221653696517?s=20

And you can read my original design for the project here: http://tom-jubert.blogspot.com/2020/08/project-announcement-twitter-game.html 

And now I NEED YOUR HELP.

It has continued to be so much fun for me to write this game. I have two other projects right now, including Talos Principle 2: The Taloist Principlest Yet, but the freedom to write what I want, when I want on this Twitter thing still absolutely thrills me. 

The low player count is a blessing and a curse. If I had a large, paying audience for this project I could happily do little else. And at the same time, writing for just myself and the 10-20 people who vote on each decision point is totally liberating. I don't need to worry myself with polish, or marketing, or teamwork. It really is a dream, and I don't care if only a handful ever read it, so long as someone out there gets something from it.

That's where YOU come in. I am craving the kind of feedback I'm used to on a bigger project. I want playtesting. I want reviews. I want complaints. I want ENGAGEMENT. Knowing what you enjoy about my work and what you don't is the greatest possible motivation for me to keep going.

So. If you are a fan of my work, this work, or are otherwise thus inclined, I would very much appreciate you doing any or all of the following:

- Comment your thoughts, reactions, suggestions, doubts, full reviews and any other feedback. Do that here, on Twitter, or by email.

- Retweet the start of the story on twitter, or just your favourite moments. Maybe even retweet with a comment to your followers describing the game and encouraging them to check it out.

- Engage with the new episode, which starts right here: https://twitter.com/TomJubert/status/1341131581658976257 

- Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tomjubert 

If you only have energy for one of the above and want to know which is most valuable to me, please prioritise the first bullet and share with me your reaction to the story, however you can. 

Project Announcement: Twitter Game

 

OK so I recently deleted my Twitter and then reopened it and there was a reason and that reason turned out to be MY NEW GAME!

Play free right now here: https://twitter.com/TomJubert/status/1294393221653696517?s=20

It's a live RPG using Twitter as both engine/dev tool and publishing platform.