Diaspora: Shattered Armistice, a fan-made Battlestar Galactica video game, has been released after 4 years in development.
The title is based on one central idea: the desire to pilot, and fight in, the ships from the Battlestar Galactica television series – courtesy of an indie mod team that coalesced on Hard Light Productions.
The plot is kept simple, as illustrated by the succint synopsis from the development team:
It has been 40 years since the devastating war between the Colonials and the Cylons. 40 years where no one has seen or heard of the Cylons. 40 years where the armistice has held.
This is basically the plot of the series, in brief, but that’s as far as it gets, after that, it’s all in-ship missions.
The primary gameplay mechanic is first-person dog-fighting simulation, and the game is full of designs based on those seen in the show, with battles and missions similar in scale. Multi-player will allow team-based combat in the same environments, and an environment editor will allow players to create custom battle scenarios.
It seems like there would be some copyright infringement here, but the assets are all new. Besides the from-scratch ship models, the game features original vocal talent and a sound track of all new music, reminiscent of the music used in the show. It’s essentially the video game equivalent of fan-fiction, which is protected under fair-use rules. Of course, that means they cannot charge for the distribution of the game.
Diaspora: Shattered Armistice is available now. You can check out more information about the game over on the Hard Light forums. That’s also where you’ll find the links to download the free game. If you’re on Windows and are ready to give it a shot, here’s the torrent seed.
