With a small handful of exceptions, games that draw from an existing license are a risky proposition.
At best, they can feel like arbitrary analogues of already-popular games; at worst, hollow cash grabs.
Developer Black Lab Games' Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock breaks that trend by adding some original wrinkles to the turn-based strategy genre, while capitalizing on the most popular aspects of the series.
Set Condition One
The Battlestar Galactica property has enamored two generations of sci-fi enthusiasts, with the original 1978 series and 2007 reboot achieving cult classic status.
Nearly a decade after the divisive ending of Ronald Moore's reimagined series, Deadlock sets itself on ground left relatively untouched by either series, taking us into the throes of the first Cylon war.
The $39.99 game puts you in command of the entire colonial fleet and the disposition of its forces.
Familiarity with the Battlestar Galactica series isn't necessary, as Deadlock does a solid job getting the uninitiated up to speed.
That said, recognizable ship designs and settings are present, and a handful characters share surnames with major characters from both series.
Deadlock hedges its bets on a formula that will be familiar to anyone who has played a turn-based strategy game in the past decade.
A meta strategy layer involving the maintenance and deployment of your fleets is ultimately determined by your victories or defeats in individual, turn-based battles.
Success awards experience to your various fleets, letting them repel more powerful enemies, but defeat puts a stranglehold on your resources.
These mechanics are framed within Battlestar Galactica's fiction, which tasks you with the security of your patron worlds.
These worlds, in turn, provide you with the resources necessary to develop your fleets and fend off Cylon incursions.
Plan and Execute
The meta layer is all about assessing threats and judging your ability to quickly counter them.
Cylon incursions occur every turn at random points around the map, and you must snuff them out as quickly as possible.
This can prove difficult early on, given the limited resources at your disposal; you'll often feel swamped until you build up a sizable enough force to deal with problems as they arise.
However, unlike the brutal XCOM 2 , the losing conditions are lenient enough that you rarely feel as though you've backed yourself into a corner.
The strategic layer feels cumbersome, however, with crucial data sometimes sequestered away in graphs or buried in the UI.
Finding the information you need at a glance is rarely easy, and fleet management is the worst offender.
Changing the composition of your fleet is an unintuitive and arduous process.
By the end of the campaign, you manage six fleets, each composed of at least six ships, each with its own admiralty.
Handling operations quickly becomes a nuisance, as there's no easy way to swap or add ships between flotillas.
This annoying process could have been circumvented with the addition of a small menu; instead you have to remove and add ships individually.
Attaching admirals to specific fleets is a solid thematic concept, but mechanically uninteresting.
Admirals accumulate experience over time, which lets them command larger fleets, but not much else.
While they can learn additional skills to bolster certain aspects of their fleets, or glean more resources from the planets they govern, the impact these skills have is so small that it largely goes unnoticed.
This lack of distinction ultimately leads you to grow more attached to specific ships rather than the people who command them.
This mechanic is underwhelming; it doesn't add much, but doesn't detract from the experience either.
The campaign itself is fairly substantial, especially with the $9.99 Broken Alliance DLC, which has you fight colonial separatists as well as Cylons.
A single playthrough of the main campaign and DLC missions on moderate difficulty clocked in at around 30-plus hours.
Not being able to play as the Cylons in a campaign scenario does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity, considering that they have a whole set of mechanics that differ from those of the colonial fleet.
You can explore these strategic options through the game's multiplayer or skirmish modes, pitting you and a custom fleet against either your friends or an AI opponent.
Action Stations
The tactical battles are where Deadlock really shines.
Deadlock's unique take on turn-based strategy has you and your opponent plan, and then execute, your movements simultaneously.
This format gives you time to consider your actions, which helps when selecting the various tactical options at your disposal within the three-dimensional battlespace.
Similar to Battletech ($39.99 at Humble Bundle) , Deadlock caps the number of units you can bring to a fight; this prevents Deadlock's battles from becoming too unwieldy without sacrificing scale.
The combat largely involves attempting to place the enemy in your ships firing arcs, while limiting your exposure to return fire.
This concept is generally engaging, but some strategies can feel a bit unbalanced.
This can lead to relying heavily on a single, optimal path to victory, rather than experimenting with new methods as your enemy adapts.
Most of these strategies aren't available until the later stages of the campaign, so battles can feel somewhat repetitive after a while.
Thankfully, Deadlock has an auto-resolve feature that can be used for some of the smaller battles.
This lets you maintain focus on grand strategy rather than micro-managing every minor skirmish.
Black Lab Games took creative liberties to expand on the existing library of capital ships present in Battlestar Galactica canon, but remained loyal to the original aesthetic and included the majority of designs featured in both television programs.
For example, agile Vipers swoop in ahead of your lumbering Battlestars, dueling with enemy fighters while your nimble corvettes tie up the enemy's flank.
Howl of Battle
Deadlock's soundtrack echoes much of what made the Battlestar Galactica reboot score so memorable.
The haunting choral melodies that are punctuated by emphatic drum beats could easily be mistaken for composer Bear McCreary's exceptional work for the 2007 TV series.
The sound design also mirrors the CGI space battles of the reimagined series, with a muted effect blanketing the whole affair.
The hollow cracks of flak barrages intercept the quiet whooshing of a missile barrage as an unfortunate Cylon gunship silently explodes in the distance as its bulkheads collapse.
The game's voice work is limited but passable; the campaign is narrated by a cast of voice actors that perform their roles reasonably well.
Firing Your Engines
Deadlock isn't particularly demanding from a hardware perspective, as the turn-based nature gives even modest machines ample time to render the game's assets.
That said, the load times sometimes fall on the lengthy side.
My PC, which packs an Intel 3.4GHz Core i7 CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, ran the game on its highest setting.
The rig's hardware easily exceeds Deadlock's minimum specs, which specify a 2GHz CPU paired with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 or Nvidia GeForce 460 GPU.
Unfortunately, Deadlock still ran into occasional hitches that caused the game to dip below the ideal 60 frames-per-second frame rate.
However, this sometimes-inconsistent performance isn't enough to detract from the overall gameplay considering how good the game looks in action.
The attention to the visual design is particularly noticeable with the games replay feature, which is less about tactical analysis and more about delivering a cinematic experience.
These replays excellently replicate the cinematography used in the shows, complete with fly-bys of your capital ships' broadsides and over-the-shoulder shots as your fighters make strafing runs.
As a Steam game, Deadlock supports Steam Achievements, Steam Trading Cards, and Steam Cloud.
So Say We All
Black Lab Games has done justice to this storied franchise by combining the television shows' best elements with solid turn-based strategy mechanics.
While Deadlock certainly isn't the first game to bear the weight of the Battlestar license, none have managed to execute on it with this level of success, while also adding depth to its existing canon.
Although its best aspects are sometimes clouded by a dense fog of logistics and spreadsheets, Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock will still appeal to fans of turn-based strategy games and Battlestar Galactica itself.
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock (for PC)
Pros
Excellent blend of familiar and new design.
Evocative score and sound design.
Unique take on turn-based combat.
The Bottom Line
Unwieldy logistics may sometimes obscure its best facets, but Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock does justice to its namesake by giving us more of the awesome space battles and strange lore the television series is known for.
With a small handful of exceptions, games that draw from an existing license are a risky proposition.
At best, they can feel like arbitrary analogues of already-popular games; at worst, hollow cash grabs.
Developer Black Lab Games' Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock breaks that trend by adding some original wrinkles to the turn-based strategy genre, while capitalizing on the most popular aspects of the series.
Set Condition One
The Battlestar Galactica property has enamored two generations of sci-fi enthusiasts, with the original 1978 series and 2007 reboot achieving cult classic status.
Nearly a decade after the divisive ending of Ronald Moore's reimagined series, Deadlock sets itself on ground left relatively untouched by either series, taking us into the throes of the first Cylon war.
The $39.99 game puts you in command of the entire colonial fleet and the disposition of its forces.
Familiarity with the Battlestar Galactica series isn't necessary, as Deadlock does a solid job getting the uninitiated up to speed.
That said, recognizable ship designs and settings are present, and a handful characters share surnames with major characters from both series.
Deadlock hedges its bets on a formula that will be familiar to anyone who has played a turn-based strategy game in the past decade.
A meta strategy layer involving the maintenance and deployment of your fleets is ultimately determined by your victories or defeats in individual, turn-based battles.
Success awards experience to your various fleets, letting them repel more powerful enemies, but defeat puts a stranglehold on your resources.
These mechanics are framed within Battlestar Galactica's fiction, which tasks you with the security of your patron worlds.
These worlds, in turn, provide you with the resources necessary to develop your fleets and fend off Cylon incursions.
Plan and Execute
The meta layer is all about assessing threats and judging your ability to quickly counter them.
Cylon incursions occur every turn at random points around the map, and you must snuff them out as quickly as possible.
This can prove difficult early on, given the limited resources at your disposal; you'll often feel swamped until you build up a sizable enough force to deal with problems as they arise.
However, unlike the brutal XCOM 2 , the losing conditions are lenient enough that you rarely feel as though you've backed yourself into a corner.
The strategic layer feels cumbersome, however, with crucial data sometimes sequestered away in graphs or buried in the UI.
Finding the information you need at a glance is rarely easy, and fleet management is the worst offender.
Changing the composition of your fleet is an unintuitive and arduous process.
By the end of the campaign, you manage six fleets, each composed of at least six ships, each with its own admiralty.
Handling operations quickly becomes a nuisance, as there's no easy way to swap or add ships between flotillas.
This annoying process could have been circumvented with the addition of a small menu; instead you have to remove and add ships individually.
Attaching admirals to specific fleets is a solid thematic concept, but mechanically uninteresting.
Admirals accumulate experience over time, which lets them command larger fleets, but not much else.
While they can learn additional skills to bolster certain aspects of their fleets, or glean more resources from the planets they govern, the impact these skills have is so small that it largely goes unnoticed.
This lack of distinction ultimately leads you to grow more attached to specific ships rather than the people who command them.
This mechanic is underwhelming; it doesn't add much, but doesn't detract from the experience either.
The campaign itself is fairly substantial, especially with the $9.99 Broken Alliance DLC, which has you fight colonial separatists as well as Cylons.
A single playthrough of the main campaign and DLC missions on moderate difficulty clocked in at around 30-plus hours.
Not being able to play as the Cylons in a campaign scenario does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity, considering that they have a whole set of mechanics that differ from those of the colonial fleet.
You can explore these strategic options through the game's multiplayer or skirmish modes, pitting you and a custom fleet against either your friends or an AI opponent.
Action Stations
The tactical battles are where Deadlock really shines.
Deadlock's unique take on turn-based strategy has you and your opponent plan, and then execute, your movements simultaneously.
This format gives you time to consider your actions, which helps when selecting the various tactical options at your disposal within the three-dimensional battlespace.
Similar to Battletech ($39.99 at Humble Bundle) , Deadlock caps the number of units you can bring to a fight; this prevents Deadlock's battles from becoming too unwieldy without sacrificing scale.
The combat largely involves attempting to place the enemy in your ships firing arcs, while limiting your exposure to return fire.
This concept is generally engaging, but some strategies can feel a bit unbalanced.
This can lead to relying heavily on a single, optimal path to victory, rather than experimenting with new methods as your enemy adapts.
Most of these strategies aren't available until the later stages of the campaign, so battles can feel somewhat repetitive after a while.
Thankfully, Deadlock has an auto-resolve feature that can be used for some of the smaller battles.
This lets you maintain focus on grand strategy rather than micro-managing every minor skirmish.
Black Lab Games took creative liberties to expand on the existing library of capital ships present in Battlestar Galactica canon, but remained loyal to the original aesthetic and included the majority of designs featured in both television programs.
For example, agile Vipers swoop in ahead of your lumbering Battlestars, dueling with enemy fighters while your nimble corvettes tie up the enemy's flank.
Howl of Battle
Deadlock's soundtrack echoes much of what made the Battlestar Galactica reboot score so memorable.
The haunting choral melodies that are punctuated by emphatic drum beats could easily be mistaken for composer Bear McCreary's exceptional work for the 2007 TV series.
The sound design also mirrors the CGI space battles of the reimagined series, with a muted effect blanketing the whole affair.
The hollow cracks of flak barrages intercept the quiet whooshing of a missile barrage as an unfortunate Cylon gunship silently explodes in the distance as its bulkheads collapse.
The game's voice work is limited but passable; the campaign is narrated by a cast of voice actors that perform their roles reasonably well.
Firing Your Engines
Deadlock isn't particularly demanding from a hardware perspective, as the turn-based nature gives even modest machines ample time to render the game's assets.
That said, the load times sometimes fall on the lengthy side.
My PC, which packs an Intel 3.4GHz Core i7 CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, ran the game on its highest setting.
The rig's hardware easily exceeds Deadlock's minimum specs, which specify a 2GHz CPU paired with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 or Nvidia GeForce 460 GPU.
Unfortunately, Deadlock still ran into occasional hitches that caused the game to dip below the ideal 60 frames-per-second frame rate.
However, this sometimes-inconsistent performance isn't enough to detract from the overall gameplay considering how good the game looks in action.
The attention to the visual design is particularly noticeable with the games replay feature, which is less about tactical analysis and more about delivering a cinematic experience.
These replays excellently replicate the cinematography used in the shows, complete with fly-bys of your capital ships' broadsides and over-the-shoulder shots as your fighters make strafing runs.
As a Steam game, Deadlock supports Steam Achievements, Steam Trading Cards, and Steam Cloud.
So Say We All
Black Lab Games has done justice to this storied franchise by combining the television shows' best elements with solid turn-based strategy mechanics.
While Deadlock certainly isn't the first game to bear the weight of the Battlestar license, none have managed to execute on it with this level of success, while also adding depth to its existing canon.
Although its best aspects are sometimes clouded by a dense fog of logistics and spreadsheets, Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock will still appeal to fans of turn-based strategy games and Battlestar Galactica itself.
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock (for PC)
Pros
Excellent blend of familiar and new design.
Evocative score and sound design.
Unique take on turn-based combat.
The Bottom Line
Unwieldy logistics may sometimes obscure its best facets, but Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock does justice to its namesake by giving us more of the awesome space battles and strange lore the television series is known for.
