Publisher Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) has long been rumored to be working on a reimplementation of their much loved board game Battlestar Galactica (BSG). It’s a game of betrayal and hidden loyalties that came out back in 2008 and really put the social deduction genre on the map. BSG has long since gone out of print, and copies can fetch as much as $200+ on the secondary market.
Over the past few weeks, FFG has been teasing the release of a new Cthulhu mythos board game on social media. Word on the street was that it was going to be a reimplementation of Battlestar Galactica and it turns out those rumors were true. Enter Unfathomable, FFG’s newest game in the Arkham Files.
“The year is 1913. The steamship SS Atlantica is two days out from port on its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Its unsuspecting passengers fully anticipated a calm journey to Boston, Massachusetts, with nothing out of the ordinary to look forward to. However, strange nightmares plague the minds of the people aboard the ship every night; rumors circulate of dark shapes following closely behind the ship just beneath the waves; and tensions rise when a body is discovered in the ship’s chapel, signs of a strange ritual littered around the corpse. This voyage began like any other, but now it seems that the Atlantica may never reach its destination.”
Reading through how the game is played, this is definitely a new version of Battlestar Galactica. There are hidden loyalties (you are either a human, Deep One, or a hybrid), with the humans trying to manage the ship’s four different resources (instead of a spaceship it’s a steamliner). Each turn there will be a crisis on the ship that players will secretly contribute cards to help it pass or fail. If this is all starting to sound really familiar, it’s because it’s the core gameplay of BSG.
I don’t know yet just how much has changed from BSG, but it was an excellent game in its own right, so it’s nice to see it getting another go, even with a completely different theme.
Unfathomable releases this September and carries a price tag of $79.95 (ouch) if you want to preorder it from FFG today.
