Spoiler Warning: Beware of minor spoilers for Star Trek: Outposts Unknown and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
I did not expect to be talking about *another* brand-new Star Trek video game so soon after covering Shadow Frontier, but here we are! Paramount Games – Skydance-Paramount’s newly-established interactive media wing – is clearly going all-in on the Star Trek franchise, which is great to see. After the announcement of a third-person horror title, “Summer Games Fest” has just introduced us to a top-down strategy game also set in the Star Trek franchise: Outposts Unknown. And there’s a free demo available to play right now!
Here’s a question which might cement your Trekkie status (or leave you questioning whether you can really call yourself a “true Star Trek fan” any more!) – do you remember a game called Star Trek: New Worlds? No, not “Strange New Worlds,” just simply “New Worlds” – it was a similar colony-building title which was released in the year 2000. Outposts Unknown is, as you might expect, light-years ahead in terms of graphics, and takes advantage of a quarter of a century’s worth of improvements in game design… but there are echoes of that older title, I felt. I had a blast playing New Worlds shortly after the turn of the millennium, so to get another game in that same kind of space all these years later? It’s just a lot of fun!
If you missed it, by the way, I’ve already taken a look at Shadow Frontier, so click or tap here if you want to check out my thoughts on that title.
The player’s ship in a cut-scene.
Last time, I said that Bloober Team – the developers of Shadow Frontier – was a studio I’d heard of and that has a good reputation. Their 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2, for instance, won several top industry awards. Outposts Unknown is being developed by Magic Fuel Games and published by Playstack, neither of which I’m familiar with.
However, Magic Fuel Games seems to have experience in developing city-building games, which is a positive thing, and Playstack published Post-Apocalyptic Courier Service, which is a game I’ve at least heard of! Cityscapes: Sim Builder – developed by Magic Fuel Games – seems to get good reviews on Apple and Android, too. So there are reasons to be positive, even if the developers and publishers aren’t big names in the industry yet.
Beaming down at the start of the game.
But that’s for the future, and while I *hope* that the finished game will be good… the demo had a problem. In short, after I’d played for almost three hours (on a single save file), the demo locked up and wouldn’t let me progress any further. In-game characters came to a standstill, the in-game clock stopped advancing, and while the music kept playing and I could move the camera around, I couldn’t do anything. I tried all of the usual things to unlock a locked-up game: closing the programme, re-loading the save, even rebooting my PC. But nothing helped – and with no other save files (that I could find, anyway) my three hours of progress seem to have been for nought.
I appreciate that “game development is hard,” and that this demo version represents an unfinished game that’s still being worked on. Bugs are expected. But… I don’t think it’s unfair to ask Magic Fuel Games and Playstack to make sure that the *demo version* is playable and free from this kind of issue. Is it? I would’ve liked to at least get to the end of the part of the game that the demo allows, partly for my own enjoyment and partly so I could relay that experience to you via my website… but I couldn’t. There’s a serious bug in the current version of the demo, as of mid-June 2026, which prevented me from going beyond in-game day 21. And so, with great regret, I have to recommend *against* downloading the demo unless and until that issue can be fixed.
This was as far as I could get before everything locked up.
That is a major caveat, as you can see.
But I did spend close to three hours with Outposts Unknown before I was locked out of progressing, and I have some thoughts. I’ve tried not to let the run-ending bug colour my impressions, because there are definitely things to enjoy about Outposts Unknown.
First of all, I really like the game’s art style. You might say it’s got a kind of “mobile game” aesthetic, but I don’t necessarily mean that as an insult. I like the less-than-realistic style used for character models, buildings, and so on, and I especially enjoyed the bright colours in the environment. Outposts Unknown is vibrant, and that gives the alien planet a truly “otherworldly” feel. Sometimes, even Star Trek on TV can mess this up, with too many planets feeling samey, like they’re all filmed on the same handful of sites in Southern California or Toronto! So to get a planet that looks genuinely alien and different was pretty great.
I really like the bright colours and the game’s overall aesthetic.
Something I thought to myself several times while I was playing the demo is that Outposts Unknown is the kind of game I could easily see myself sinking hour upon hour into. Although the game isn’t a true “sandbox,” its procedurally-generated elements give it a certain amount of replayability – assuming that the main story will be solid enough. Gameplay reminded me a little of titles like Banished, and if you know me, you’ll know I’m a huge Banished fan. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into that game, and I can see the potential in Outposts Unknown to become a similar kind of obsession!
If you’ve played games like Banished, you’ve got a starting point for understanding how Outposts Unknown works. You have resources to collect, buildings to construct, upgrades to unlock, trades to manage, and individual workers (referred to here as “crew members”) to keep happy and healthy. Basic resources can be used in construction, or they can be refined into new variants, which in turn are needed to unlock more advanced buildings and to replenish supplies. Balancing all of this will be something that takes some figuring out; I wasn’t perfect at it in the demo by any stretch!
A building (the security office) under construction.
This kind of gameplay naturally means that there are going to be times where you have more to do and times where you have less to do. Waiting while members of the crew gather enough resources to progress with construction, or waiting for enough refined materials to be produced may, to some players, feel “boring.” I didn’t really get that impression most of the time, but I think it’s worth noting that – *especially* in the opening act – games like this can feel slow-paced.
One thing that I felt really *didn’t* help in this regard, though, was Outpost Unknown’s crew shift system. In brief, the game is split into a day-night cycle, and during the day, your crew will be on the ground, doing their jobs, keeping your little outpost running. But at night? They all board a shuttle and fuck off back to the ship. That *would* be fine… except the in-game clock keeps ticking, and you’re just sort of… sitting there, looking at the screen, waiting for them to come back. Nothing can happen at the outpost without crew; there’s no way (that I found, anyway) to automate things like resource extraction or refining, and there also doesn’t seem to be any way for the crew to rest on the planet. Even speeding up the in-game clock to its fastest setting still meant several minutes of just… nothing at all happening. I’d love to see an option to skip these dead night sections by the time the game makes it to its full release.
The entire crew just fucks off for several in-game hours, and you’re stuck with nothing to do…
I was also a little confused by the ship itself; in brief, you have a few things aboard your ship (in orbit) that you can upgrade and manage, even though you don’t spend any time there and only see it on a menu screen. This wasn’t particularly well-explained in the demo, and I found that my ship, for instance, complained about running out of hyposprays at one point. But… why? And also, why should I care? I mean, it *sounds* like it could be an issue, right? But… with no explanation for what I need hyposprays for, or what their absence may do to the crew (nor how to manufacture them, either) it just kinda… passed me by.
Games like this can feel like they’re throwing a lot at you, especially when you’re just getting started, and in some ways, that’s just how it goes when you boot up a brand-new strategy game. Figuring out the intricacies of the rules and which resources to prioritise – especially when you don’t have the manpower to do it all – is part of the fun of playing! But, especially in a demo version, I guess I just expected a little more guidance on getting started.
The ship menu.
I like that Outposts Unknown is set in the Strange New Worlds timeline, and that the game is clearly leaning into the aesthetic of that series. Unfortunately, it comes along a little late – Strange New Worlds has been cancelled, sadly, and will end with a truncated fifth season that will probably air next year. But it’s nice to get at least one video game set in the Strange New Worlds era before the show fully wraps up. And yes, I’m still upset that Strange New Worlds was prematurely cancelled by Star Trek’s new corporate overlords!
Admiral Robert April, who appears in Strange New Worlds, was seen briefly in the demo; I don’t know if any other characters from the show will cross over, nor even how prevalent Admiral April’s role will be further into the game, but it would be nice to get even just a couple of short missions or cameo moments from familiar faces. Does the game *desperately need* that? Arguably not… but if it’s a game made to appeal to existing Trekkies, why not include a handful of familiar characters at key moments in the story?
Admiral April kicks off the game’s story.
I’m not the *greatest* player in the world when it comes to strategy games! And I give that as a caveat because I felt a few moments in the demo were either confusing, not sufficiently explained, or just set up in such a way as to take a long time. At one point, relatively early in my run, my next objective (the game gives you objectives in a linear fashion) was to unlock something from the tech tree and synthesise five refined materials called Tech Data. But the demo didn’t explain how to do this or where to get these from – and it was actually a pretty convoluted process.
To get Tech Data you need some kind of advanced science lab (I forgot its name, sorry!), but you can’t just build one. In order to build this lab, you first need refined metal, which means harvesting enough raw metal to build a metal refinery, *then* even more metal to get enough to build the lab. But the refinery and the lab both need power, so you need to build a power generator, *and* wire up the generator to both buildings. All the while… I still only had eight crewmen to get anything done. It took multiple in-game days to achieve this one task when every preceding task had been much quicker. And I just… I didn’t like that, to be blunt. Not for a demo. If I was playing a full campaign, then sure – that kind of thing is par for the course. But to take, like, forty minutes or more of real-world time (at the game’s full speed, too) just… waiting? It didn’t leave a great impression, to be honest.
My small colony. The advanced science lab is the building with the blue roof.
There were a couple of other bugs in the demo besides the one that killed my run. At one point, two different crewmen were killed by one of the planet’s weirdly aggressive plants – but they didn’t fight back, and I didn’t get any kind of alert or warning. I didn’t see the first one happen, but the second one was in the exact same location, so I think it was the same issue. In brief, both crewmen were attacked while harvesting a resource, and they seem to have prioritised continuing to work over defending themselves, leading to both of them being killed.
And this leads nicely into my next point: it takes *forever* to replace even one dead crewman! You only get “resupplied” once every four or so in-game days, and when this pops up, you get the chance to add one new crewman (or to choose to add some rare resources). But this is *painfully* slow, especially in what feels like the early game; there’s gotta be a better way to replace dead crewmen than just waiting around for days on end while your colony’s efficiency drops.
Getting re-supplied gives you a chance to expand your crew roster (or replace dead crew members).
That being said, I liked the characters. I *adore* any strategy game that lets you rename your workers – your crew, in this case! And it’s just a bit of fun to give them silly names (or, perhaps, to pick real names from Star Trek’s extensive history if you wanna go lore-accurate!) And the crew were pretty diverse – a good mix of humans, Vulcans, and Andorians, though it would be nice to see a few other familiar races represented, too.
And, like I do in any game like this, I found myself getting attached to some of the crew! When they were in danger – and when the game worked properly and *informed me* that they were in danger – it could feel genuinely tense. Combat, such as it is, is pretty minimal, with crew members firing phasers and wearing down the hit-points of mysterious alien flora. But it looks pretty good, and the game has a photo mode if you’re into that kinda thing.
A close-up look at one of the crew members.
I think I’ve waffled on for long enough.
Think “Star Trek does Banished,” and you’re not a million light-years away from Outposts Unknown. If you like slower-paced base-building games, or if you enjoyed New Worlds back in the day, I think there’s a lot of potential in the game. But, at this stage, I have to recommend caution because of the game’s bugs. Being forced to end a three-hour run, with seemingly no way to go back and salvage things… that’s kinda annoying, and I would’ve liked to have made it to the end of the demo so I’d feel more confident in issuing a recommendation.
If Magic Fuel Games and Playstack keep working on it, and can successfully quash these bugs, then I can see Outposts Unknown becoming a real time-sink for me. It’s the style of game that generally appeals to me, especially with my arthritis limiting my reflexes in some other, faster-paced titles. And as a Trekkie… I’m always going to be interested in a game like this. It’s a genre I like and a franchise I love coming together. As long as the game actually works by the time it launches, I’ll be happy.
A crew member gathering resources.
This is not a big-budget, “triple-A” kind of title, so you will need to set appropriate expectations. But, speaking for myself, I enjoy the art style, the somewhat less-realistic but still bright and cheerful colour palette and character designs, and the largely text-based interface, with little voice acting, isn’t really a problem for me personally. But as the games industry moves on and more players *do* expect more things like that, it’s something to be aware of before you commit.
I hope this has been interesting. I’m in no mood, frankly, to try again with the demo and potentially kill another two or three hours, only to get locked out again. So unless I see a significant patch, I’ll wait for the game’s full release. And… to be honest, maybe I’ll wait a few days *after* launch to check the reviews! Bugs happen in games, especially games that are still in development – I get it! But this was Outposts Unknown’s one chance to make a good first impression. And despite enjoying myself with the demo much of the time… that bug absolutely ruined it, and it’s definitely giving me pause and making me feel a little cautious about jumping in on day one.
If you decide to try out the demo for yourself… good luck. I hope you’re able to make it all the way to the end! When Outposts Unknown launches – which is allegedly gonna be later this year – I’ll try my best to review the full game, so be sure to check back for that. And if you missed it earlier in the year, I reviewed Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown, which is another Star Trek strategy/management title. Click or tap here to check out my thoughts on that game. And until next time… Live Long and Prosper, friends!
Star Trek: Outposts Unknown will be released on PC and MacOS in 2026. Star Trek: Outposts Unknown is the copyright of Magic Fuel Games and/or Playstack. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of the Skydance-Paramount corporation. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware minor spoilers for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard.
I wasn’t planning to cover anything that came out of “Summer Games Fest” this year; none of the rumours about updates, reveals, and announcements prior to the broadcast really leapt out at me – and I still have a backlog of games from the past few years that I need to get through! But I was pleasantly surprised to see that Star Trek: Shadow Frontier has been announced – a new single-player, third-person, horror-focused adventure game from Bloober Team… a development studio that I’ve actually heard of!
Skydance-Paramount is doing some *weird* things with the Star Trek franchise at the moment, eh? After cancelling every single TV series that had been in production at the time of the corporate merger, we’ve since had three new video games announced: the VR-only Infection, the absolutely brilliant Across The Unknown (which I reviewed earlier this year), and now Shadow Frontier. Just as Star Trek seems to be winding down on the small screen, at least for the foreseeable future, in the interactive space, we’ve hardly ever seen this many titles in production at once!
A new Star Trek game is coming next year!
Paramount Games is Skydance-Paramount’s newly-formed publishing arm, and in addition to Shadow Frontier, it’s also going to be taking the reins of other big franchises and properties that now fall under this growing corporate umbrella. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin was also announced at “Summer Games Fest,” and there’s a fighting game based on the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, as well as a few other titles. Paramount Games is also taking over the publishing rights for the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise, which has several video game adaptations under its belt, and even (weirdly) the upcoming title Marvel 1943: The Rise of Hydra.
I think it’s interesting, in the aftermath of the corporate merger, to see Skydance-Paramount making a big push in the video games space. Interactive media is a growing and lucrative business, so it makes a lot of sense – and for a big corporation with successful and beloved IP, it’s a no-brainer to develop video games using those familiar names. As a Trekkie, I kinda hope that this means we’ll see more Star Trek games going forward, and I want to support Shadow Frontier as best as I can with that goal in mind. If Star Trek is disappearing from streaming/TV in the years ahead, and perhaps only popping up as an occasional cinematic franchise, video games could be a new frontier for the franchise, keeping the lights on and throwing a bone to the fan community.
Paramount Games’ lineup.
Very few Star Trek games have ever really taken the gaming landscape by storm, which is such a shame. If you think about it, there should be a huge overlap between Trekkies and gamers, yet most Star Trek games have tended to be relatively low-budget titles that really only appealed to the existing fanbase. The only real exception that I can recall was 2000’s Elite Force, which, for a time, became a darling of LAN parties and the burgeoning online shooter scene.
Bloober Team, though, is a good developer – their Silent Hill 2 remake a couple of years ago was wildly successful and highly-praised. You could hardly have picked a better studio to develop a single-player horror title, and I’m genuinely optimistic and even enthusiastic for Shadow Frontier based on little more than the development studio’s pedigree.
Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2 won several big awards.
A horror game wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice – it isn’t my personal favourite genre for video games, films, or TV. But there are two great reasons to be hopeful about Shadow Frontier. The first, as mentioned, is Bloober Team’s track record. Their two most recent horror titles: Silent Hill 2 and Cronos: The New Dawn were both well-received upon release. And the second, to be honest, is that Star Trek can do horror really well.
Recent episodes of Strange New Worlds, Picard, and Discovery have all leaned into horror and horror-adjacent ideas in recent years, and going further back, episodes like DS9′s Empok Nor are rightly heralded as classics. Star Trek may not be the first name audiences think of when considering sci-fi horror, but after telling almost 1,000 stories across six decades, it’s fair to say that the franchise has tangled with the genre on more than one occasion! There are some truly unsettling aliens and monsters in Star Trek’s galaxy, and even if none of them are going to be the main antagonist in Shadow Frontier, I think it’s fair to say that space has all kinds of terrifying monsters and mysteries to explore.
Sprinting down a spooky starship corridor…
I got the impression, just based on the teaser trailer that Paramount Games released, that players are going to be wrangling with a new alien or monster on this occasion, not a familiar faction like the Borg or Klingons. So my dream “Borg Invasion” idea will have to wait a bit longer! It’s hard to judge from a very short teaser, which was mostly cinematic and seemed to show only the barest teases of gameplay, but I got a kind of Dead Space or Prey vibe from the weird-looking tendrils or “corruption” that seemed to be afflicting parts of the starship.
But there will clearly be room for connections to familiar characters and factions, even if the entity or alien monster itself is new to Star Trek, and I’d really love to see how this new story will fit in with what we already know of this part of the 24th Century. I don’t want to speculate too much, but I think it’s gotta be at least possible that a bigger link to someone like the Borg, the Dominion, or the Romulans will be part of the game’s narrative.
Objects floating in zero gravity.
And then we have Ro Laren! Ro, who will be voiced by original actress Michelle Forbes, is going to be the main playable character! That just sounds like a really fun idea, and I can see Shadow Frontier potentially filling in some of the gaps in Ro’s story in between The Next Generation and her return in Picard a couple of years ago. Despite the TNG-era combadge, which featured prominently in the trailer, I’m not convinced that this game will take place during or just after The Next Generation, but rather a few years later, perhaps, somewhere in the final couple of decades of the 24th Century.
Ro’s role in Starfleet, which was explained in Picard, makes her a great choice of character for a game like this. If we assume that this alien monster (or whatever it is) will be something that Starfleet needs to send a covert agent to tackle… I mean, the stage is pretty much set for someone like Ro, isn’t it? Above all, I just think it’s so nice, all these years later, to be getting new stories with this wonderful character. Ro was one of the first major recurring characters in the Star Trek franchise, and her arrival also began Star Trek’s expansion, with the Bajorans and Cardassians taking on an important role in Deep Space Nine. I was thrilled to welcome Ro back to Star Trek a couple of years ago, and to get a new chapter of her story in this interactive form… it just sounds really fantastic!
Ro Laren as seen in the teaser.
I’m also thrilled to see Skydance-Paramount greenlighting a *single-player* title for Star Trek, instead of trying to cram the franchise into a live service or online multiplayer mould. There are too many games like that already, and even massive, well-established brands have faltered when trying to launch that kind of game. You need only look to Marvel’s Avengers or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League for examples of that. There must’ve been a temptation to say, “hey, let’s try to make a Star Trek Fortnite clone,” with the ambition of raking in stupid levels of cash. That was never realistic, of course… but when has that stopped a corporate executive from drooling all over their shirt at the chance of making that kind of money?
I’ve always preferred single-player games, and I think I always will! So, speaking for myself, I’m really glad to see this kind of game being created in the Star Trek franchise. I’m sure there’ll be a “special edition” with character costumes and that kind of thing, and perhaps even DLC if Shadow Frontier sells well; such things are par for the course in the modern video games industry. But at its core, Shadow Frontier will be a single-player adventure with a story to follow… and I just like that kind of game much more than the open-ended, story-less titles that have become more common in recent years.
A “corrupted” Federation starship.
There are, I should point out, reasons to be cautious with a new Star Trek game. The franchise doesn’t have a great track record in the video games space more generally, even if some recent titles have done very well. 2013’s Kelvin timeline game is one of the worst games of its decade, being released in a broken, unplayable state. And some other titles, despite seeming to have potential, never really took off in the way I’d have hoped.
The current video games industry also has its unpleasant trends. “Release now, fix later” has screwed over so many titles in recent years, as games are launched too soon, needing a lot of work in order to meet what I’d consider the bare minimum acceptable standards. And there are monetisation problems, not only with titles being overpriced, but also coming with expensive “special editions,” paid “early” access periods, and more. I hope that Shadow Frontier will be priced fairly, and that if there is to be DLC, it’ll be good value for what it is. Above all, I hope that the game will launch in a decent state, and won’t be forced out too soon to meet an arbitrary deadline.
Red Alert! A new Star Trek game is incoming!
So that’s all for today.
I’m genuinely looking forward to Shadow Frontier, and I think the game has a ton of potential. It’s the first Star Trek game from the newly-established Paramount Games, and of this new Skydance-Paramount era, so I hope the corporation is planning to go all-out and make it special. Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown did really well earlier this year; I think it’s fair to say that that game exceeded expectations. If Shadow Frontier can do something similar… we could be seeing a Star Trek resurgence in the interactive space. And that would be fantastic.
In the 60th anniversary year, things have felt pretty quiet… or even disappointing. Starfleet Academy’s cancellation may have been expected, but it was still a bitter blow to learn that Star Trek on streaming seems to be winding down in its entirety. This announcement may not be as big or bold as a new TV show, but I’m still pleased to see it. And there are reasons for positivity. I’ll do what I can to support Shadow Frontier, and when it’s ready I’ll try to review it here on the website. Thanks for reading, and as always… Live Long and Prosper, friends!
Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is currently scheduled to be released in 2027 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2. Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is the copyright of Bloober Team and Paramount Games. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of the Skydance-Paramount corporation. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown and for Star Trek: Voyager.
After I wrapped up my review of Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown (which you can find by clicking or tapping here; don’t miss it!) I went back to the game for another run! That’s something I almost never do; re-playing a game so soon after finishing it usually doesn’t hold much appeal. But I think that alone is testament to how enjoyable Across The Unknown was for this old fan of Voyager.
That second run unfolded quite differently, as I made some deliberate choices that I hoped would lead to completely different outcomes. I ended my first run through the game without having unlocked some optional hero characters; I went out of my way to grab some more of them this time. And I tried to set up the USS Voyager differently, too – different rooms, different weapons arrays, and so on, having run through the tech tree in a different order.
I’m back for round two!
And that’s really my first point about the game: it genuinely plays very differently depending on how you set up the ship and which heroes you have at your disposal. In my first run, I found myself struggling with crew morale quite a lot, so this time, I went out of my way to try to unlock more morale-boosting options. I subbed out emergency quarters for officers’ quarters, upgraded the holodeck, built an observation lounge, and upgraded the quality of meals in the Mess Hall. My morale was hampered this time because I chose to keep Tuvix – meaning I lost Neelix – but those other upgrades and unlocks were fun. Though I had to swap most of the officers’ quarters for standard crew quarters and Borg alcoves later in the game!
Unlocking different heroes was fun, too. I noted in my original review that some decisions – like keeping Tuvix instead of restoring Neelix and Tuvok – lead to “worse” outcomes, and I stand by that to an extent. But, having deliberately tried to unlock more heroes this time around than I did in my first run, I think at least *some* of that can be offset. For example, my first run through the game utilised Tuvok in almost every combat encounter for his unique ability; I found that Tuvix, while weaker, was an okay substitute, especially when teamed up with other heroes. And although I managed to save B’Elanna this time, her unique combat ability (recharging shields) could be replaced in a way by one of a couple of other heroes who also have defensive powers.
Not a retraction, then, but an amendment!
Selecting a hero for a combat encounter.
I encountered a bug this time that forced me to re-play part of a side-mission. The mission based on the episode Child’s Play, which can result in Icheb being unlocked as a hero character, bugged out in its final act. After racing back to the Borg Cube to rescue the away team, I managed to convince Icheb to stand down, allowing me to beam everyone out. But rather than getting the final cut-scene in sickbay, after the dialogue box popped up telling me what was happening, I was back to the system screen with the Borg Cube still intact. I had to re-play that final section of the mission, complete with random rolls of the digital dice, and at the second time of asking, it was fully completed. I don’t know if that’s a common bug, but I hope it can be fixed.
Let’s stick with the digital dice for now – also known as “random number generation,” or RNG for short.
On one occasion, I think it was in Sector 6 or 7, I was soft-locked and unable to progress any further because of a roll of the digital dice. In short, in order to complete the main mission of that sector – which is essential for moving on to the next one – I needed about ten dilithium crystals (one of several in-game resources that you can spend on ship upgrades, tech unlocks, and so on). I didn’t have enough dilithium to unlock the required technology or build… whatever it was that I needed to build. But, as luck would have it, there was *one* remaining planet in the entire sector that contained dilithium. So I warped over to it, chose the option that has the largest chance of a positive outcome… and got fucked over by the digital dice.
RNG can really mess things up, sometimes…
In a game about balancing and managing your resources, you have to keep on top of things to make sure you have enough of everything, that you aren’t wasting resources, and so on. I get that that’s how the game is designed. But mission-critical technologies and unlocks shouldn’t depend on resources – especially not rare ones like dilithium, which only have a few available points of interest per sector. Something like this is inevitable in that case.
This example hammered home how reliant the game is on RNG because of how annoying it was to get to this point of interest and come away with zero dilithium when I needed it to progress. But really, this kind of thing could happen at any point in that sector’s main mission. Suppose I’d decided I wanted to unlock the next tier of the combat tech tree, which requires dilithium, or that I’d wanted to upgrade main engineering, which also requires dilithium. I could’ve used up my available supply well before I even knew I’d need that resource to progress the main story, and I could end up ruining my playthrough of that entire sector completely by accident. Even if these mission-critical technologies or builds normally require certain resources to progress, I really think there should be a way around this for players who literally cannot get those resources. Otherwise the game is effectively soft-lockable every time this arises. And to add insult to injury, Across The Unknown autosaved as soon as the digital dice failed to deliver my dilithium – meaning my *only* choice was to re-play that entire sector.
The system view.
RNG also plays a role in away missions – and again, this can lead to some pretty silly outcomes. In the mission based on Dark Frontier, which is another main quest, I ended up at the Borg Queen’s unicomplex to rescue Seven of Nine. I chose three heroes for the away team based on what the game suggested I needed: a pilot, most notably, and then someone with engineering skills. I made it to the final dice-roll screen, and I had what looked like a relatively good two-thirds chance of success. But, of course, RNG did its thing and that final dice roll ended up as a failure.
That’s fine, you might say, that’s how it goes. But this particular dice roll leads to an instant game over if you fail it.
In this case, I’d manually saved right before the trip to the Borg base, so I could re-load and try again. But it really didn’t feel good, or like the game was reacting in any way to my choices or the way I’d set things up, by randomly deciding that I’d failed that final hurdle and that that was going to be fatal to *the entire ship and everyone aboard*. If I’d been defeated in a real-time combat event, then sure. Or if I’d had some other way to feel like I was in control of events. But because it was literally just a roll of the digital dice – a roll that had a relatively high chance of success, too – it just felt wrong that it should lead to an instant game over.
It’s annoying to lose because of an unlucky roll of the dice.
I noted earlier that, on this run, I was deliberately making different choices to try to see some different results. Many of these were fun, but one… well, it really wasn’t. And I think it makes the story significantly worse and less comprehensible, especially for anyone new to Voyager or who doesn’t remember the episode in question. The mission based on the episode Equinox – which is a main mission and must be played – can go one of two ways: either Janeway and the crew are able to uncover what happened aboard the Equinox, revealing the truth behind why Captain Ransom and his crew are under attack by aliens from another realm, or… they just never find out anything at all.
Ransom’s actions in the second case make absolutely no sense. You make one choice, relatively early into the mission, and begin working on defensive measures to protect against the aliens. Then, for no reason at all – not just a reason that doesn’t make narrative sense, but literally no reason whatsoever – Ransom’s crew attack Voyager, steal the technology, and warp away. The rest of the mission plays out similarly – you face off against the Equinox in combat, beat them, and then you can either try to save some of their crew or not. But there’s still no explanation at all for what happened… and it just felt pretty unsatisfying, and like a way, way worse version of the story of that episode.
The Equinox.
I think, in this case, a combination of factors came into play. Firstly, I didn’t have the Doctor’s mobile emitter for away missions, so he couldn’t go to Equinox’s lab (I think). Then, I didn’t have Tuvok to lead an investigation, as I had Tuvix instead. And finally, I made a different choice at the beginning of the mission, which set me on that path.
I’m really in favour of the game plotting out different outcomes to key events in Voyager’s story – that’s the whole point, and I think it’s pretty fun. But when one of the main stories you get to experience has one canon outcome that makes sense and a non-canon one that’s just incredibly random… it makes it less fun and less interesting. It would be neat, for example, if you uncovered the truth, arrested Ransom, made peace with the aliens, and got to keep the Equinox as an allied ship to join you in combat. Or if you never uncovered the truth, you’d maybe have to sacrifice the Equinox but unlock Ransom as a hero character. Just a couple of examples of how this mission could unfold differently from how it did in the show, but in ways that would make narrative sense based on choices which players can make.
Encountering Captain Ransom.
Next, I’d like to talk about a few absences that I felt more strongly this time around.
It’s odd that Janeway can *never* go on away missions. Even away missions that, canonically in the show, Janeway did take part in, she can’t go on in Across The Unknown. I’m sure there’d be a way to make this happen – maybe Janeway cannot die no matter what, if that’s important to the way the game works. Or maybe if she does die, Chakotay steps up to be captain with Tuvok as second-in-command? I’d love to have the freedom to pick Janeway for *all* away missions, but I understand if that’s difficult for some reason. Still, I think making her available for *some* specific away missions, those we know she canonically went on, would be a huge improvement.
Secondly… where’s the Delta Flyer? I thought I’d just missed this, or not unlocked it, on my first playthrough, because I wasn’t using the shuttlebay very much. But this time, I went out of my way to keep the shuttlebay functional all the time, and unlocking upgrades and everything. But… no Delta Flyer.
The shuttlebay… with no Delta Flyer option.
A game like Across The Unknown, where you have a tech tree, upgrades, resources, and literally already have buildable shuttles, would’ve been *perfect* for including the Delta Flyer! I just cannot fathom why it wasn’t included, especially given its prominence in later seasons of the show. The Delta Flyer appeared in 29 Voyager episodes from Season 5 onwards, and I just find it very strange that it’s not part of the game at all.
As an example of how it could work, the Delta Flyer could either function like an upgrade to the standard shuttle, increasing the chances of successful outcomes for shuttle-based missions/points of interest. Or it could be its own thing entirely, unlocking different pathways to progress through certain missions – like the way the Vidiian Surgical Device or Pralor Shield Technology can be used to bypass certain checkpoints in some missions, or grant 100% successful outcomes. It could be a fun thing to unlock, too, requiring its own side-mission and a lot of resources to construct. Just… an odd omission. And no, I don’t think the trading-only aeroshuttle makes up for it in any way.
Tuvok and Paris designing the Delta Flyer.
I mentioned this in my review, but the game’s finale still feels pretty underwhelming. You get a text-only log, told from Janeway’s perspective, as the ship is seen cruising towards Earth… and then that’s it. In Endgame, the final shot showed Voyager being escorted by several other Starfleet vessels as she finally made it home – that would be a huge improvement. And I’d love – *love* – to see the ship swooping over the Golden Gate Bridge. That would really be a perfect way to end the game.
It would be great if that final log entry could be fully-voiced, too. I know that the developers went out of their way to recruit Robert Duncan McNeill and Tim Russ to reprise their roles and record log entries, and those logs have been a ton of fun. I don’t know whether getting Kate Mulgrew is in any way realistic – especially if it’s only for one scene. So maybe Tuvok and Paris could narrate that final scene between them? I don’t think it would be so glaring or so notable if we hadn’t had those logs from Paris and Tuvok throughout the game, but I think it does feel like something is missing from those final moments. At the very least, I’d like to see updated cut-scenes depicting Voyager, accompanied by more Starfleet ships, and ideally, that shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, too.
How incredible would it have been to get this scene as the final ending?
There are a few memorable episodes from the show that I feel would’ve made for fun inclusions. I know that, with 168 episodes, Across The Unknown couldn’t possibly adapt all of them! That’s fine – some episodes wouldn’t really suit a game like this, anyway. But some genuinely would, and while I’m not surprised that they’re missing, I think adding them in would be a great way to improve the game.
Let’s start with Year of Hell. This would, in my view, work best as a new main mission with a whole sector entirely built around Voyager’s conflict with the Krenim. Imagine slowly having to deactivate entire decks, seeing heroes die, rooms destroyed, and eventually having to make a final, consequential choice: sacrifice this version of the ship and this version of Janeway, who you’ve spent the whole sector with, to potentially restore an earlier version of the ship and the timeline, or try to escape the Krenim having basically lost everything. Making the canon choice would reset Voyager back to the way it was before the sector began – all your unlocks and collected resources would be gone, but the ship and any dead heroes would be restored. Alternatively, trying to press on could mean the ship is permanently crippled – unable to increase the warp core cap, or perhaps with entire decks permanently destroyed and unusable. It could be an *incredible* inclusion if handled well.
The badly-damaged ship in Year of Hell.
The 37’s could see you gain Amelia Earhart as a hero – or else lose half the crew to staying behind on the colony, if you don’t play your cards right. Dreadnought could put B’Elanna at risk, but could unlock torpedo upgrades, perhaps. False Profits could unlock a Ferengi hero. Future’s End would be a fun blast of ’90s nostalgia with an away mission to Earth! The Omega Directive could be another, like Juggernaut, that has potentially run-ending consequences, but which could unlock a powerful new technology or something of that ilk. Relativity would send Seven to the future, building on the events of Future’s End, and could unlock Ducane as a hero. Pathfinder could unlock Barclay as a hero, and that would be a lot of fun. The Haunting of Deck Twelve would be a fun, spooky nebula story that could unlock a new tech to help make navigating nebulae easier. Prophecy could net you a classic Klingon D7 Battlecruiser as a combat ally. And so on – I’m sure you have your own examples.
Maybe, given the game’s success, some of these ideas will be considered for free updates or even as paid DLC. I’ve had a blast with Across The Unknown so far… and I genuinely wouldn’t mind paying for DLC if it expanded the game significantly. I said in my review that the “deluxe edition” felt a bit steep for what it was, but an expansion which would add one main story mission in Year of Hell, half a dozen side-missions as suggested above, a few new characters, a couple of new techs, and more… I mean, I’d buy that.
Imagine getting a mission based on Future’s End with all its ’90s nostalgia!
I’d like to see some potential late-game upgrades to both the transporter and the ship’s combat abilities. In short, I think it would be a lot of fun if you could work your way up to being able to have *four* heroes, instead of three, for both away missions and combat. There are a few heroes who I didn’t really get to use very much, and I just think it would be fun to add that in as an option.
Sometimes in games like this, I scout out the tech tree and decide which prizes are worth racing to get! And in Across The Unknown, it could be worth speed-running something like a transporter upgrade if it meant you could send four people on away missions, increasing both your chances of success *and* the XP those characters would gain. It would need to be balanced carefully, so that other aspects of the game don’t end up feeling too easy, but I think it’s achievable. And, again, it would be an improvement – as well as something for players to work towards.
Three heroes on the transporter pad.
Something I didn’t mention in my review, but really should have, pertains to balancing. In short… I kind of feel like Across The Unknown is a game divided into two halves. You have the early missions, leading up to the conflict with Seska and Culluh, and then after that… you have the rest of the game. The early game is much, much harder, and I would personally rate the fight against Culluh as the toughest boss battle in Across The Unknown. That entire sector beats you up, with random Kazon encounters a near-constant threat, and it comes at a point when you won’t have had time to either properly build up the ship or unlock all of your capabilities.
But after beating Culluh (which took me two attempts even on my second run), the game kind of eases off – or at least, it feels like it does. The result of this is that you kind of have a game of two halves: before and after the Culluh fight. A tougher early game culminates in a very tricky boss fight, but then things seem to let up and you get what feels like an easier ride through the remainder of the game. I don’t think that’s a criticism, necessarily – more of an observation. But if you’ve been struggling, wondering if it’s worth sticking with the game because of how difficult it feels at first… definitely persevere. Once you’re past Culluh, I found it got a lot easier (and more fun!)
The game gets easier once you get past Culluh and Seska.
I really like the artwork used to depict away missions. I like the “painted” style, and how these images give each away mission a unique flavour. But if I could make one request, it would be this: please make new art assets that depict a variety of different heroes taking part in these missions! It feels a bit immersion-breaking, sometimes, to have sent Chakotay, Tom Paris, and Harry Kim on an assignment… only for all of the art to depict Seven of Nine and B’Elanna. These are static images, and I’m sure it’s possible to make more of them to depict different heroes in different missions. I’m no graphic design expert (clearly), but I’m sure that, with a combination of transparent layers and such, the same character models could even be re-used.
I just think it would be more fun and more immersive if away missions genuinely reflected the characters I’d assigned to them. Not *every* scene needs to be remade from scratch – there are plenty of moments where artwork depicts a villain, a landscape, or a hero who is mandatory for the assignment in question. But it’s a bit disappointing, sometimes, to see the “wrong” characters depicted in the artwork, especially when, sometimes, the characters who *are* shown aren’t even the recommended ones for the mission in question.
This screenshot shows Neelix and Harry Kim in the artwork even though neither character was present on the mission.
So that’s it.
I think I’ve *finally* said everything I wanted to say about Across The Unknown!
If it’s not clear from my review and this piece… I really love this game. It’s 100% a “game of the year” contender for me, as it brings one of my favourite parts of the Star Trek franchise to life in a new and unexpected way. I had a blast playing – and re-playing – Across The Unknown, and I may very well jump back in for a third run later in the year. If you’ve been on the fence about the game at all… I really think it’s worth trying out.
The USS Voyager.
When making suggestions for improvements or potential DLC, I tried to be realistic. I don’t think the game needs to be fully-voiced by the entire main cast, nor do I think that would be a realistic request. I don’t think the game needs first-person, Doom-inspired away missions… nor is that a realistic ask, at this stage! But I think there are a few things that need to be tweaked, a few ways the game could be improved, and some additions that could make for an incredible DLC bundle, if developers GameXcite are interested in going down that road. Across The Unknown seems to have sold really well, which is great news. So maybe DLC is a possibility.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my coverage of Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown. If you missed my original review, you can find it by clicking or tapping here. And I also have a gallery containing more than 180 screenshots from the game, which you’re free to use in your own reviews or other projects. You can find that by clicking or tapping here.
As Star Trek’s landmark 60th anniversary year rolls on, I’ve got plenty of other things planned right here on the website! There’ll be a review of Starfleet Academy Season 1 later in the month, episode re-watches, and more. So stay tuned. And… Live Long and Prosper!
Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown is out now for Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles. Across The Unknown was developed by GameXcite and published by Daedalic Entertainment. Star Trek: Voyager remains the copyright of the Skydance/Paramount corporation. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware spoilers for Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown and for Star Trek: Voyager.
I’ve been getting acquainted with the brand-new Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown over the last few days. Last year marked Voyager’s 30th anniversary – which is insane to think about, by the way, and makes me feel oh so very old! But it also made it the perfect time for a new Voyager game’s announcement, and with Across The Unknown looking like my kinda thing, I was excited to give it a try. I picked up the “deluxe edition” of the game as soon as it became available, and I’m ready to share my thoughts with you today.
Firstly, though, a couple of important caveats.
Everything we’re going to get into today is the entirely *subjective, not objective* opinion of just one person. If you have a different perspective on Across The Unknown or Voyager in general… that’s okay. I offer my take to the Trekkie community based on how I experienced the game. And in addition, Across The Unknown is a deceptively big game, with some procedurally-generated elements, luck-based mechanics that play a role in determining outcomes, and multiple pathways and even multiple endings. I have not experienced all that the game has to offer, and I’m basing this review on one “run” through the game, plus one abortive “half-run” that ended too soon.
Ready to get lost in the Delta Quadrant?
So let’s talk Across The Unknown – or, as I keep mistakenly calling it, Into The Unknown. Remember that song? The one from Frozen II? It’s stuck in my head now.
Big-picture talk: I like Across The Unknown. I think it’s a game designed from the ground up by Trekkies, with Trekkies in mind, and it really leans into all aspects of Voyager, coming across as a true celebration of the series. Gameplay-wise, though? There are some flaws and deficiencies which hold it back a little as things stand. I’m buoyed by developer GameXcite’s commitment to acting on feedback, but there is one basic missing feature that even a first-time amateur developer should’ve known fans would want to see included, and it’s a shame it’s absent from Across The Unknown at launch.
There are also a handful of bugs that impacted my experience, including one that stopped me from navigating between the game’s three main menus, effectively soft-locking me out and forcing me to reload my most recent autosave. Again, GameXcite seem willing to continue to work on the game post-launch, with a couple of patches having been rolled out for the PC version already. Hopefully, these issues (and any others I may not have encountered) will be resolved – but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re sitting on the fence about the game right now. Perhaps waiting as little as a couple of weeks will mean the version you download and install will be a tad smoother and better across the board.
An example of a minor text bug.
Across The Unknown is missing an incredibly basic function of video games that I almost can’t believe wasn’t included at launch: a proper save system. The game relies on an autosave, with the intention of playing like a “rogue-like” experience, complete with permanent, run-impacting choices.
The problem with that is the sheer *randomness* to too many of the outcomes. To give one example from my first run, I encountered a mission based on the episode Faces, which involved the Vidiians splitting B’Elanna into two separate people. This mission, despite me having an upgraded sickbay, the Doctor being present, being fully-equipped with resources, and – for want of a better term – doing everything “the right way,” resulted in B’Elanna’s death. This came in my first run through the game, at a relatively early stage, leaving me without one of Voyager’s main characters. I’d have wanted to go back and undo that, but doing so meant either restarting the entire sector or starting again from scratch.
Some outcomes feel very luck-dependent.
I admire the intention to go for an “old-school” style of gameplay. But I’m someone who believes games should give players options. I’m on the record supporting the practice of “save-scumming,” at least in single-player experiences like Across The Unknown. A game like this, which demands hours of your time, should be customisable to an extent, and should be able to be tailored to the way you want to play. By all means, do what Baldur’s Gate 3 does and have a mode where save-scumming is disabled and players have to rely on one single autosave only. But for folks who either don’t have a lot of time to play, or who want a more relaxed approach to the game? A proper free save system is *essential*, and I find it hard to believe that no one at GameXcite didn’t raise this as an issue before launch.
Responding to this exact line of criticism, GameXcite has pledged to “find a solution that brings you there,” to quote one of their recent updates. I don’t know what the time-frame might be on something like that, but it will be a *major* improvement to the game, assuming the developers can find a way to get it over the line. I sympathise, to an extent, because this is clearly not the way the game was envisioned or originally designed. But the ability to freely save – or at least to have multiple autosaves to choose from, perhaps – is something so incredibly basic, something that has been part of video games for decades… the fact it’s missing is a glaring omission. The sooner this is fixed, the better Across The Unknown will be.
Having to re-play whole sectors because you got a bad outcome (that was impossible to predict)? Not a lot of fun for me!
In my playthrough of the game’s demo version last year, I made note of the lack of voice acting, and how it was text-only. I didn’t mean that as a criticism, really, but I wanted folks to be aware of the kind of title Across The Unknown was before jumping in. Since then, however, GameXcite managed to recruit two of Voyager’s original cast members – Tim Russ and Robert Duncan McNeill – to reprise their roles and record a series of logs. These logs are played at the beginning of each new sector (assuming the characters are both alive and part of the crew), and it’s a nice addition.
Unlike a proper save system, I don’t think Across The Unknown would’ve felt incomplete without these logs, but it’s an example of GameXcite responding to the feedback they picked up from the demo version of the game, and it’s nice that they chose to expand the title to include this extra feature. The logs are a lot of fun, they’re very “Star Trekky,” and it’s always great when a project like this can bring back members of the original cast in some form.
One of Tuvok’s logs.
In addition to the soft-locking bug I mentioned above, I encountered another, comparatively minor bug. At one point, my ship was afflicted by a “deuterium infestation,” which gradually depleted my deuterium stockpile over time. Despite taking the appropriate actions to fix this problem, the pop-up notification (which is on the left-hand side of the screen) never disappeared for the remainder of that run. I don’t know why it didn’t, and after a while, I just sort of tuned it out. But I’m pretty sure this *is* a bug, and the notification should’ve been removed after the issue was resolved.
A more serious bug soon followed. In short, if you’ve had to re-play a section of the game, or if you’ve been defeated in combat and need to re-load the sector, you have the option to choose to skip chunks of dialogue. That’s fine – good, even, because there’s nothing more frustrating, sometimes, than having to sit through an inspiring speech or villain’s monologue that you’ve heard a dozen times! But choosing to skip dialogue *after* locking in an optional choice seemed to mean that the desired outcome didn’t happen – even if it literally had a 100% chance of happening.
The system view. You’ll spend a lot of time here.
This next part is spoiler-y, so skip this paragraph if you really want to avoid that.
After playing through the Kazon-Nistrim/Seska storyline (which is mandatory), and arriving at the final combat encounter, Harry Kim has the idea to use holographic projections to make it seem as if Voyager has allied vessels fighting alongside her. If you succeed in this check, which, in my run, had something like a 90% chance of success, it removed two of the Kazon vessels from the subsequent fight. But if you skip the remainder of the conversation *after* choosing this option, even if the game told you you’d succeeded, the enemy ships would be present. An annoying bug, if a specific one.
There were no hard crashes during my playthrough, and compared to the demo version (which seemed to be putting a lot of strain on my CPU for some reason, making the fans work overtime to keep things cool), I’d say Across The Unknown ran pretty well on my PC. This shouldn’t be a massively demanding game; it’s less than 9GB in total, and there aren’t a ton of models or animations. But there are still characters to animate, as well as real-time ship battles. It’s nice to see a game that runs well out of the gate – not something that’s always guaranteed any more, sadly, in this age of “release now, fix later” titles and endless patches.
The climactic battle against Seska and Culluh.
Let’s talk about the “deluxe edition.”
I usually don’t go in for day-one DLC, but I violated that rule for Across The Unknown. I did so primarily as a show of support for the development team, but I think it’s worth saying that this additional content… didn’t really add a lot. The deluxe edition content adds three technologies and five side-missions (all of which are based on episodes from Voyager). I didn’t get to play all of them, but the ones I saw were fun. The DLC also adds two “heroes;” named NPC characters who can be assigned to a variety of different roles. Neither are what you’d call a major character on the show, though.
I’m in two minds about this, really. I don’t really think it’s asking too much for games to be released in a complete state, and day-one DLC – i.e. content that was developed alongside the main game and fully-integrated into it – has never sat right with me. Not every game needs a “deluxe edition,” and when you compare the price of the base game (RRP £29.99 in the UK) to the price of the “deluxe edition” (£37.99 in the UK), I’m not sure the extra content is really worth it. I hope that, *if* any future DLC is planned, it will either be significantly better value, or else have something totally different to offer besides new random characters and a few basic missions. This isn’t to say the content is *bad*; it’s not. But your mileage may vary when it comes to determining the value, and if price is a concern, I don’t think you’re missing out by not paying the extra money on this occasion.
The “deluxe edition” content.
Something that came to irk me, a little, was how the game became quite pushy at insisting I advance the story and move on, leaving a sector before fully exploring and encountering everything. As above with saving, the intention behind this may be admirable, in some ways; Across The Unknown’s developers want you to feel the pressure of Voyager’s long journey home, and want you to have to make choices between exploring every corner of a sector and maintaining crew morale.
I get it.
But when, in every single sector, you’re getting pop-up after pop-up telling you that the crew are getting angsty and want you to move on… it becomes more of an irritation than anything else.
Piss off, Tuvok…
This can happen even *before* completing the main objective in a sector, meaning that you can be feeling the pressure to move on when you literally cannot move on, as that option is still locked. And you can argue that I should’ve gotten a move on and prioritised the main story! Fair point. But isn’t the point of a game about commanding a starship that you have *some* freedom to explore? In most games, I’ll try to do side-quests first, then the main mission, and go through each level that way to maximise the amount of stuff I get to explore. Across The Unknown wants to limit this… and I don’t think the way it’s implemented is quite working right.
As with free saving, I’d be fine if this was a toggleable option – if you had the ability to turn this feature on or off. But if I may propose a compromise: why not limit this so it only happens after the main mission in a sector is complete? That would still keep the pressure on, but it would give players a bit more freedom to play the game in different ways.
Main engineering.
Speaking of freedom, one thing I was concerned about before Across The Unknown launched was the extent of player freedom when it comes to making key narrative decisions. This is absolutely *crucial* to the game’s potential replayability, and any narrative adventure – even a rogue-like experience – needs to make decisions feel impactful. Moreover, a game based on an existing story that aims to give players the ability to deviate from that story needs to find a way to balance different outcomes.
There were several places where, to be blunt about it, I felt like the game was very much on rails. These two examples are spoiler-ific, so feel free to skip a couple of paragraphs if you want.
At the end of two sectors in the first part of the game – the battle against Culluh and Seska and the Borg/Species 8472 conflict specifically – I felt like the game almost railroaded me into getting a specific outcome. In the case of the Kazon, no matter who I chose to accuse, whether I chose to pursue or let Seska escape, and whatever other choices I had… it still culminated in a conflict and a battle I had to win. And with the Borg, even choosing not to engage and trying to seek an alternate route eventually led to the events of Scorpion unfolding exactly as they did in the show. There are *smaller* differences along the way – it’s possible to recruit Seska after the Kazon war, Kes can survive the events of Gift, and Seven can die, preventing her from joining the crew, to give three examples.
This “deal or no deal” moment felt like a false choice.
The real issue, when you boil it down, is that these outcomes *still* feel pretty random. Seska’s choice to join or not join the crew was basically a 50/50. Seven’s survival odds were pretty good, if you’d completed most of the required upgrades, but it still depended on the roll of a digital dice. These storylines were mandatory, which I get, in a game like this; there are limits on how far the game could diverge from Voyager’s actual adventure, after all! But in a way, that makes offering alternate pathways and different endings even *more* important. If, for instance, Seven could refuse to join the crew if you hadn’t done something, or if she could be replaced by a Klingon or Romulan ex-Borg, for instance, there’d be a bit more interest, a reason to do things a certain way, and consequences or rewards that made a run through the game feel a bit more tailored and personal. As it is, the game pushes you down certain paths to outcomes that feel either guaranteed or totally random and disconnected from your choices, neither of which is especially compelling.
Okay, the worst of the spoilers are over for now.
Because the game does have a risk-reward system in place, practically any main character can die during a run. As I noted, B’Elanna died during my first abortive run, and I also did the “meme” thing of keeping Tuvix rather than forcing him to be separated back into Neelix and Tuvok. Both of those events unquestionably shook things up.
Tuvix.
But… here’s the next issue. Each hero character has a backup. Lose Tuvok, you get Nunez, whose dialogue looks to be word-for-word identical. Lose Neelix, and you get a “wish.com” generic Talaxian. Lose Seven? You get her slightly less useful twin: Nine of Nine. All of these characters are functionally the same as the heroes they stand in for, but slightly worse or less effective in their roles.
This has a double-whammy of an impact: there’s really only *one* ideal set of characters, heroes that have the best skills and the best chance of surviving away missions and combat encounters. And if you lose them, you don’t even get any kind of different dialogue or new storylines involving their replacements. Voyager didn’t have the same kind of expansive secondary cast as, say, DS9 did, but there *are* secondary characters or even one-off guest stars who could and should be able to fill some of these roles – and crucially, do something a little different with them.
“We’ve got Seven of Nine at home.”
Suppose you choose to keep Tuvix, permanently losing Neelix and Tuvok in the process. Tuvix has some skills, sure, but he’s neither the combat expert Tuvok was nor the morale officer Neelix was – he’s demonstrably worse in both roles, *and* there’s only one of him. So, yes, you have the “moral conundrum” of killing Tuvix, as Janeway did in the story… but you can also totally ignore this side-mission, as I found myself consciously doing in my second run through the game. There were basically zero narrative or gameplay consequences to doing so, and I got an outcome that is almost “objectively” better.
And this is true with all of the heroes – at least, all of the ones I encountered during my playthrough.
This leaves the game feeling… well, tense, sometimes, if you’re worried about a hero on an away mission or during a side-mission. But also, more importantly, it feels like there’s really only “one” right way to approach the game: Janeway’s way, the way she did things in the show. This was another thing I was concerned about before launch, and it’s disappointing to see it pan out.
Your choice has consequences…
A game like Across The Unknown absolutely *should* have storylines and side-quests where the TV show outcome is the best one, and there should be irreplaceable characters, whose loss impacts the remainder of a playthrough. But… is it too much to ask that some of these potentially different outcomes are better? Or at least, that their impacts are neutral, with losses somewhere being offset by gains elsewhere? Because right now, Across The Unknown is great if you want to faithfully replicate Voyager’s journey as seen on TV. It’s less interesting if you feel like you could’ve done better, or that there might’ve been other approaches to certain storylines that might’ve led to verifiably better outcomes.
Because of this kind of dual impact of hero losses having a gameplay downside while also being narratively irrelevant… I found it made many side-missions unappealing. We talked about Faces and Tuvix above, where B’Elanna, Tuvok, and Neelix can all be removed from your run through the game. But those are far from the only instances where this happened, and it feels like something that’s just… built into the game at a fundamental level.
Some characters can choose to leave, too.
In any game with both random elements and characters with different stats, there are always going to be more optimal configurations and less optimal ones – that’s unavoidable, and not really the point of this line of criticism. My point is that, for a game that bills itself on putting you in “the captain’s chair,” it then really goes out of its way to push you down one narrative path, to take exactly the same decisions as in the TV show, and just generally feels unwilling or unable to open things up to potentially different and better outcomes.
This is not a fatal flaw. And I still found Across The Unknown fun to play. But I would argue that it impacts the game’s longer-term replayability; unless you want to go back and have basically the same narrative experience again, just with a few resources, planets, and nebulae in different configurations, then you’re kind of out of luck. The relatively minor, roll-of-the-dice outcomes – like a secondary character joining the crew, for instance – don’t make up for the fact that these storylines and practically all of their content unfold the same way each time.
You can choose to re-play sectors if you get a bad outcome.
Sticking with hero characters, I like how the system works at its core – but it is pretty limited. For instance, Janeway isn’t a “hero,” and can’t take part in any away missions. And while you do get some choice during away missions about which characters to use and in what configurations, there isn’t a ton of variety to this. Unless you’re deliberately trying to punish yourself, sending an away team you *know* will struggle to complete a task or mission… the worst you’re gonna get, unless you get unlucky with the digital dice, is a temporary injury to a hero.
Even then, the game pushes certain crew members into away missions, sometimes. Again, there’s that sense of being railroaded; forced by the developers to go down a specific path, even if you might’ve wanted to try something a little different. It doesn’t happen all the time, fortunately, but it happens enough to be noticeable. As above with storylines, there’s a balance to strike between allowing Voyager’s journey home to unfold the way it did on TV and giving players the freedom to explore. Sometimes, that balance has been struck reasonably well. But at other times… I felt it wasn’t.
Preparing for an away mission.
One final point of criticism relates to the final act of the game – so skip ahead a couple of paragraphs if spoilers are a concern.
Upon returning to Earth – in two of the game’s multiple endings that I saw, at any rate – we’re treating to a (text-only) log from Admiral Janeway. And for me… this scene just felt a tiny bit underwhelming. We see Voyager *approach* Earth, but that’s it. Janeway’s log mentions Voyager being escorted home, flying to San Francisco… and I just can’t help but feel I’d have liked to see that. A short, sixty- or ninety-second cut-scene depicting other starships alongside Voyager, and/or the Golden Gate Bridge flyover, would’ve done *wonders* for making the end of the game feel just that bit more special.
I like that there are multiple endings; a game like this needs that kind of diversity to reflect player choice. But as we said above… there’s kind of one “good one,” i.e. the canon ending from the show, and at least two lesser ones. Maybe I didn’t see them all, and maybe there are other ways to make it home ahead of schedule, or with even better outcomes; I’m admittedly not the best player, even on Across The Unknown’s easy mode! But for the endings to Endgame, the ones I saw were either the canon ending, or a much, much darker one.
Voyager approaches the transwarp hub.
With all of that being said, recreating Voyager’s journey home – and tweaking it sometimes, as well as experiencing it in a new medium – was a really enjoyable experience. Saving Seven of Nine from the Borg Queen and Voyager finally seeing Earth for the first time – I won’t lie, I felt myself getting a little teary-eyed, just as I did some twenty-five years ago, when I saw Endgame for the very first time. Although the game was an imperfect experience… I enjoyed it for what it was.
I also adore Across The Unknown’s sense of humour. The game really leaned into some of the jokes and even the memes that Voyager has spawned within the Trekkie community: Paris becoming a “lizard,” in his words, Harry Kim’s lack of a promotion, and yes, of course, Tuvix, too. These little in-jokes didn’t go too far, nor did they feel like they were laughing *at* the show and the Trekkie community – at least, not for me. Instead, these light-hearted moments really hammered home how this is a game made by fans, for fans.
Across The Unknown has a sense of humour.
And that feeling extended far beyond humour. There were deep cuts to episodes across all seven seasons of the show, with outcomes that felt logically consistent with Voyager, even as the game deviated or made things up. Narratively speaking, it really was a fun time, in spite of some of the negative points mentioned above.
I suppose we should talk about *gameplay* since this is a video game! Across The Unknown has two main gameplay modes: managing the ship and guiding away missions. There are a lot of stats and numbers to keep track of – miss something, and you might have to wait longer to unlock a technology, or even miss out on one of the many missions with a time limit. It can seem overwhelming, especially at first, but in-game tutorials certainly helped.
An example of the game’s HUD, showing resources and yields.
Building rooms and getting Voyager exactly how I wanted it made for a fun challenge – even on easy mode!
Getting the right balance between tactical, scientific, and crew-focused rooms and systems isn’t easy, and one wrong move can lead to morale dropping, the ship being unprepared for combat, or that certain upgrades can’t be unlocked. There are various resources you have to keep on top of, which operate similarly to other resource-management titles, only… Star Trek-themed! You have to keep on top of things like the ship’s power level, battery banks, and even the number of crew members, too – all of these affect gameplay in a big way. At one point in my run, I found myself taking a diversion to any planet or point of interest that had a chance of giving me new crew members! That was a resource I seemed to run out of, especially as crew can be killed, or take long periods of shore leave.
It was really only when I got into the final act of the game that I felt I’d got the ship exactly the way I wanted it. I was generating just enough food from hydroponics bays to keep on top of the food supply, I had two science labs on the go for researching upgrades and unlocking new technologies, and enough quarters and cargo bays to store everything and accommodate everyone. Earlier acts of the game saw me turning off even some important rooms and systems just to keep the ship flying. You may be better at that kind of micromanagement than I am, but for me, it was part of the fun.
Voyager’s star-drive section.
Both random exploration and progressing through missions unlocked combat encounters and away missions, and both of these were fun. Occasionally, I think only really in one sector, I found frequent, repetitive combat encounters that started to get stale, but for the most part, I enjoyed tweaking Voyager’s systems and trying to get the best possible balance of shields and weapons. I installed disruptors and a Borg cutting beam on my version of Voyager – and these powerful weapons made short work of even the Borg, later on in the game!
Away missions were fun, and I especially liked the “hand-drawn” art style that the game employed for these moments. Across The Unknown makes recommendations and occasionally pushes key crew members into away missions, but there’s a decent amount of freedom there, too. Missing a crew member with specific skills can make things harder, but even on easy mode, I never felt that away missions were too easy. That randomness I mentioned? That’s a big part of why, I suppose!
An away mission.
Unlocking new heroes gives you more freedom when it comes to away missions, and heroes can also be assigned to various rooms aboard Voyager, increasing yields and outputs. This was a fun aspect of the game, and I found myself trying to balance which heroes I took on away missions – because that’s how to level them up, further increasing their skills and bonuses. All in all, a fun element of the game.
The key to a game like this is to set your expectations appropriately. This isn’t a big-budget title with the greatest graphics, and there’s a lot of text-based conversations and clicking through menus. But for a Trekkie, and for a fan of Voyager in particular, it’s hard *not* to recommend the title, even with the caveat that updates are coming which should improve the gameplay experience somewhat.
A close-up look at a Borg-ified room.
I was thrilled to see a positive reaction to Across The Unknown’s launch. GameXcite said it exceeded their wildest expectations, and if recent reporting is accurate, the game sold more than 100,000 copies within its first few days on sale. That’s absolutely fantastic news, and kinda crazy, if you think about it! A game based on a TV series which has been off the air for a quarter of a century doing numbers like that? I guess Paramount was wrong: fans *do* want more from Voyager. Something like, oh, I don’t know… a remaster of the series?! The game’s success is, at the very least, proof positive that there’s still an audience for that incredible TV show.
I spent just over thirteen hours with the game – and in that time, as mentioned, I aborted one run after the third sector, I think, and then completed one full run. In my full run, I went back to replay the ending once, to see if I could get a different outcome. So I reckon there’s a solid eleven or twelve hours’ worth of content per run, at the very least – perhaps more, if you do more side-missions and spend more time in each sector harvesting resources and building upgrades. The length of time a game lasts can be important, and for me at least, Across The Unknown lands in that sweet spot of feeling like good value for money.
The gorgeous USS Voyager. What a ship!
Most of my criticisms of the game – with the exception of the missing save system – arguably fall closer to nitpicks than anything else. And I always knew, going into Across The Unknown, that there’d be limitations to exploration and that the game couldn’t possibly be all things to all players. I tried to keep that in mind as I bumped up against these limits, and I hope I didn’t sound too harsh. Perhaps, if GameXcite is listening to feedback – and my points of criticism are shared more widely among players – future patches or updates can tweak the experience, at least a little.
I’m glad GameXcite managed to license the official Voyager theme music. When that announcement was made late last year, I kind of rolled my eyes; it didn’t feel like a glaring omission from the demo version, and I felt the developers could’ve spent that time and especially that money elsewhere. But you know what? I was wrong – having the proper theme music, and being careful to use it sparingly, genuinely elevated Across The Unknown in a way I didn’t anticipate, and made some of those emotional moments – Captain Ransom’s sacrifice, Seven’s rescue, and the ship making it home – feel so much more impactful.
The game has sold well.
At time of writing (less than a week after launch), Across The Unknown has had almost 10,000 concurrent players on Steam, and was number 49 in the sales charts and number 23 for most-wishlisted. Those are great numbers, and with the game also being available on PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox, that won’t be the sum total of its success. I’m really glad that the Trekkie community showed up for Across The Unknown in such a massive way. This game really does deserve all of its success.
It was a blast to return to Voyager, and to experience the long journey home in a totally new way. I loved Voyager when it was on the air, and I’ve pretty much worn out my old DVDs with how often I’ve re-watched the series over the years! I also had a lot of fun with Elite Force, back in the day, so this isn’t my first time playing a game based on this wonderful series. I really did have a good time with Across The Unknown, in spite of a few drawbacks and downsides. And it’s an easy recommendation to anyone who loves Voyager even half as much as I do.
Can you make it home to Earth?
Having completed Across The Unknown, I’m actually contemplating a second run sometime soon – there are side-missions I didn’t explore, several characters I didn’t get to unlock, and more. I’ll keep my ear to the ground about upcoming updates, and I’m not going to *immediately* dive straight back in! But I think it’s testament to the game’s success that I’m willing to go back for that second run so soon after the first.
If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading. I hope it’s clear that, despite some nitpicks and criticisms, I genuinely enjoyed Across The Unknown and recommend it to Trekkies. I’m not so sure that folks unfamiliar with Star Trek will have as much of a fun time as I did; perhaps management/base-building fanatics will find things to enjoy, though. But some games can and should be made by fans, for fans. And to me, that’s exactly how Across The Unknown felt.
Stay safe in the Delta Quadrant, friends… and Live Long and Prosper!
Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown is out now for Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles. Across The Unknown was developed by GameXcite and published by Daedalic Entertainment. Star Trek: Voyager remains the copyright of the Skydance/Paramount corporation. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Voyager, as well as details about the upcoming game Across the Unknown.
A few days ago, at the video games industry’s big Gamescom event in Germany, a brand-new Star Trek game was announced. I was very briefly excited… then disappointed when I learned it was going to be VR-only. Star Trek: Infection looked genuinely fun… but I can’t get on with VR, so I doubt I’ll be able to play it unless it gets ported to non-VR systems in the future. “That’s a shame,” I thought, decrying that the only new Star Trek video game of the past couple of years was gonna be exclusive to VR. But oh well. Life goes on.
I mean, there’s no way the Star Trek franchise is gonna announce two video games at the same event within days of each other. Not after being radio-silent on video games since Resurgence and that Prodigy tie-in game were released. Right?
Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown has just been announced by GameXcite and Daedalic Entertainment. It’s billed as a “story-driven survival strategy game” in which you, as the player, get to take command of the legendary USS Voyager during its journey home.
Are you ready to take command of the USS Voyager?
Wow. That honestly sounds like a great premise!
The game sounds like a kind of Fallout Shelter or U-Boat, with some amount of starship management in addition to the narrative choices. And that kind of game – where you get to manage and maintain the systems aboard your ship – has been one I’ve wanted to see Star Trek try out for a long time.
Voyager is a great show to use as inspiration for that kind of game. Being lost and alone, far from Federation space, gave Captain Janeway and the crew a lot of leeway when it came to making changes aboard Voyager: things like the Mess Hall and the assimilated cargo bay come to mind! And the unique community that the crew built – that sense of camaraderie that came from being the only humans in this far-flung part of the galaxy – could give the game almost a “cozy” vibe, perhaps.
Different rooms and decks.
Voyager also led to one of the Star Trek franchise’s few games that genuinely broke out of the Trekkie community to go somewhat mainstream: Elite Force. That game was a darling of early 2000s LAN parties, acquiring a good reputation with a wider audience – something very few Star Trek games have ever done, if you think about it. I don’t want to just assume that Across the Unknown will come anywhere close… but there’s precedent, at least, for potentially expanding the Star Trek fan community a little.
With all that being said, there are some caveats. Star Trek games, both recent and not-so-recent, haven’t always been particularly good… and that’s putting it mildly. Star Trek’s corporate overlords have never really seen the potential in video games as an artistic medium, and practically no licensed Star Trek game has been afforded a sufficiently high budget. The result? Compared to other big sci-fi franchises, like Star Wars and even Alien, Star Trek hasn’t made much of an impact in the video game realm, and some titles have been genuinely quite low-quality.
This looks like an away mission.
And… to be blunt, I’m getting a bit of a “cheap knock-off” vibe from the trailer and some of the screenshots of Across the Unknown. The graphics look okay, don’t get me wrong. Maybe a bit last-gen, but for a game that won’t have been given a blockbuster budget, that’s okay. But a game like this lives or dies on the quality of its management and sim elements – that’s the appeal of assuming command of the USS Voyager in a game like this. And I’m just not blown away by what I’ve seen, to be honest.
Perhaps, though, that’ll turn out to be a good thing. If I go into a game hyped up to the moon and it doesn’t live up to it, I’ll be disappointed. But if I have low expectations… it’s easier for a game to exceed them! So maybe my Fallout Shelter comparison is apt; maybe that level of quality and interactivity is about right.
This looks like a map screen, perhaps showing the available planets/star systems that can be visited.
I still need to play Resurgence. It kind of released at an awkward time for me personally, when I was feeling a bit burned out on Star Trek as a whole. I bought it, but it’s sat un-played in my Steam library ever since. Hopefully, though, I can get around to Across the Unknown a bit more quickly when it’s ready! At this stage, there’s no release date – but it could be sometime next year, maybe, based on nothing but the timing of the announcement.
I’m not familiar with developer GameXcite. The company seems to be based in Germany, and so far has released two Asterix and Obelix mobile games and one console/PC game. Oh, and for some reason… development of all of their games (including Across the Unknown) is partially funded by the German government. Go figure. The PC version of Asterix and Obelix: Heroes has a “mostly positive” rating on Steam, and I can’t see any complaints about the game running poorly, crashing, or suffering from game-breaking bugs. Which already puts it light-years ahead of 2013’s Star Trek tie-in game!
A very pretty master systems display!
But you may have heard of Across the Unknown’s publisher: Daedalic Entertainment. If that name sounds familiar, well… it’s because Daedalic was responsible for 2023’s The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, which was a broken, unfinished mess, and quite literally one of the worst games to launch that year. There’s a difference, of course, between Daedalic’s now-closed development studio and the company’s publishing arm. And Daedalic has published some genuinely good titles: Partisans 1941, for example, and 2023’s Barotrauma, which is a comparable kind of management/narrative game set on a submarine.
I’m trying to keep my expectations in check for Across the Unknown. The game’s blurb mentioned that there are twelve “sectors” of the Delta Quadrant to explore, which could mean there are basically twelve stages/levels. That… doesn’t sound like a ton of content, though I suppose it depends how detailed these sectors are, whether there are multiple star systems to visit in each one, and how many narrative events there could be. The blurb mentioned familiar faces from the show, like the Caretaker and Borg, returning, too.
The USS Voyager approaching a star.
One of the most interesting ideas, though, are the so-called “rogue-lite elements” that Across the Unknown promises to incorporate. Narrative inflection points, where choices can lead to completely different outcomes, potentially including things very different from what we saw in the TV show, sound genuinely interesting. If handled well, there could be some replayability here, making each run through the game feel different – assuming you pick different options each time!
The danger here is that there will be one “optimal” run, where, if you do everything just so, you get the best outcome, or the outcome that closest resembles the TV show. Part of the fun of an idea like this – taking the Voyager story but allowing players to make different choices – is that some of these choices could actually lead to better or just radically different outcomes. In short… if every choice except the one Captain Janeway made leads to instant death or the ship being wrecked on an asteroid, that’s not gonna take full advantage of this style of gameplay! So I hope the developers are aware of that and are at least trying to make these choices feel different and meaningful.
Ooh, it’s Harry Kim.
So that’s all for now. I shall follow Across the Unknown’s progress with interest, and when it launches – which could be next year – I daresay I’ll pick up a copy and check it out. If possible, I’ll try to write a review here on the website… but my track record with such things isn’t great, so someone might have to remind me if I forget!
Now… with Voyager getting some love in its 30th anniversary year, how about that HD remaster? Hmm, Skydance? HD remaster? HD remaster of Voyager from Skydance? Skydance’s HD remaster of Voyager to stick on Paramount+? Come on… you know you want to!
This was good news, though, and as Voyager celebrates a milestone anniversary, it’s nice to see the series getting a bit of attention from Star Trek’s corporate overlords. I’m trying to keep my expectations at a reasonable level, but if this game manages to make good on its premise, it could be a lot of fun.
Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown will launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles at an unknown future time. Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown is the copyright of GameXcite, Daedalic Entertainment, and Paramount/Skydance. The Star Trek franchise – including Voyager and all other shows discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount/Skydance. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There may be minor spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise.
I was blindsided by the recent announcement of Star Trek: Resurgence – a brand new video game set in the Star Trek galaxy. Though there have been a couple of crappy mobile games and the ever-present Star Trek Online, it’s been almost a decade since the last single-player video game in the Star Trek franchise… and that didn’t go too well!
On the whole, Star Trek as a franchise hasn’t been especially well-served in the video game realm, despite the fact that there’s always been a significant crossover between Trekkies and gamers. When compared to the Star Wars franchise, which boasts some truly excellent games, Star Trek titles have never really managed to cut through, and with only a couple of exceptions even the best Star Trek games have mostly been the preserve of existing fans.
A new Star Trek game is warping onto our screens!
Here’s hoping that Resurgence can change that! Early indications are actually pretty good: the game’s announcement came at the Game Awards, one of the biggest industry events outside of E3. Resurgence has been picked up by a number of gaming publications and websites, featuring on several lists of the “best announcements” made at the event. Because it’s been a while since there was a Star Trek game, I think that might actually work in Resurgence’s favour to an extent!
One of the main things that seems to have piqued the curiosity of many players is the pedigree of the developer: new studio Dramatic Labs. Dramatic Labs is a studio comprised of former writers and developers at Telltale Games, the studio behind titles like the incredibly well-received The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and the Batman adaptation. Many Telltale titles were exceptionally popular, with fans praising the quality of the writing and the unique branching stories that led to multiple narrative paths and several different endings.
The bridge of the USS Resolute.
I played through Telltale’s Batman game a few years ago and it was an enjoyable experience that was something different from many other titles. These narrative adventure games put storytelling and dialogue front-and-centre, allowing players to choose what to say at key moments and to influence the direction of the story through the choices they make. When I played through Batman it felt almost like an interactive film: a deep story, well-animated cut-scenes and sequences, but with many different moments at which I could choose what happened and which way the story would proceed.
The choices in games like these aren’t always obvious. In games like Mass Effect or Fallout, for example, there’s usually a “good guy” choice and a “bad guy” choice, sometimes with a neutral option thrown in for good measure. In Mass Effect you can, for example, choose to punch a news reporter or answer her questions, and in Fallout 3 you can choose to defuse a bomb or arm it and blow up a settlement. Both examples show how players can influence the story and shake up the game world, but in both cases it’s clearly telegraphed which are “good” and “bad” options. Telltale/Dramatic Labs titles don’t always make it so obvious!
Firing a phaser in the trailer.
For example, in the Batman game I mentioned, there are several points at which you have to make decisions that can have ramifications for the rest of the game but where the choice isn’t obvious. Choosing whether to save one character or another can end up creating a new villain to fight, or choosing to attend an event in costume as Batman can lead to a wholly different outcome than if Bruce Wayne attended without his disguise. These are just examples of the kind of branching narrative choices that Dramatic Labs is teasing us with in Resurgence.
We’re also promised third-person action sequences throughout Resurgence, and we saw examples of this in the trailer too. The official announcement also lists “shuttle piloting, phaser fights, tricorder scanning, stealth, and micro-gameplay mechanics” as things we’ll be able to do in the game. I’m not sure what “micro-gameplay mechanics” means in this instance; it sounds like it could be mini-games, and things like picking locks or computer hacking spring to mind as examples from other franchises. But it all sounds like a ton of fun!
Scanning with a tricorder.
From the trailer we got a glimpse of some of these systems in effect. There was a sequence with a character wearing an EV suit on what looked like the outer hull of a starship firing their phaser, a tricorder scanning sequence that looked like a lot of fun, and some sneaking around that was potentially representative of one of the stealth sections.
The idea of having two playable characters is fun, too, and we’ve seen a number of recent games do this to great effect. While we don’t know much at all about either of the playable characters, the fact that one is a senior bridge officer and the other is a non-commissioned engineer should mean we get to see two very different perspectives on the same story. Both characters should be approaching the situation from very different starting places, and that already sounds like something that could be a lot of fun. Aside from Chief O’Brien, we haven’t spent a lot of time with enlisted personnel before, and Resurgence might actually be the first time we’ve seen an enlisted crewperson as a playable video game character.
A familiar face!
It was so great to see Spock in the trailer, and I felt that the voice actor did a creditable job at imitating Leonard Nimoy’s iconic performance. Whether Spock will have a major role to play in the story isn’t clear at this stage, but as one of Star Trek’s most legendary characters his presence should be interesting at the very least. Dramatic Labs has also teased that there may be other “fan-favourite” characters included in the game, but no details yet on who those characters could be.
Dramatic Labs promise that players will “make those similar tough choices that iconic Star Trek heroes have been forced to contend with.” This is emphasising the narrative choice aspect of the game, and reinforces what I said earlier about the difficulty of some of the choices in games of this nature. The story seems to involve two alien races “on the brink of war” – I didn’t recognise either of the alien races seen in the trailer. Resurgence sounds enthralling, and I’m really excited to get stuck in.
Players will have to make some pretty tough calls in Resurgence…
We need to set appropriate expectations, though, no matter how exciting it may be to finally get a new Star Trek game after such a long time! This isn’t going to be a sprawling adventure on the scale of something like Mass Effect, nor will it be an open-world title like Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a narrative adventure game, and that (hopefully) means that we’ll get a very strong and engaging story with a good degree of choice over how it proceeds. The third-person adventure elements look fun too, and I’m excited to try out things like phaser combat and tricorder scanning.
So keep an eye out for Resurgence when it arrives in the spring. Given the developers’ pedigree, I think Resurgence has the potential to appeal to fans of narrative titles and Telltale Games as well as Star Trek fans, and as long as the game is released in a bug-free state it has a lot of potential. Star Trek feels like a natural fit for a narrative adventure title, and it reminds me in some ways of games like Deep Space Nine: Harbinger and Hidden Evil from the late 1990s/early 2000s.
I’m trying not to get over-excited! I’ve been hoping for a new single-player Star Trek game for years, and hopefully Resurgence will be the first of many as the franchise continues to grow and expand. Regardless, I’m eagerly awaiting its Spring 2022 release! I hope you’ll come back when Resurgence is out for a full review.
Star Trek: Resurgence will be released for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X in Spring 2022. Star Trek: Resurgence is the copyright of Dramatic Labs and ViacomCBS Consumer Products. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers present for the following games: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Knights of the Old Republic I & II, Mass Effect 3, and Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.
After taking a year off in 2020, the Electronic Entertainment Expo – better known as E3 – is returning later this month. In fact, many large games companies have events or announcements scheduled for June, meaning we could be in for practically an entire month of previews, trailers, teasers, and demos for a number of great upcoming titles. This time I thought it could be fun to look ahead to E3 – and other June events – and maybe make a few predictions about what we might see! There might also be a few wishes or fantasies thrown in as well!
From Microsoft and Electronic Arts to Nintendo and Ubisoft, practically all of the big names in the games industry will have something to say over the next few weeks. Much of the attention will be focused on this year’s digital E3 event, which officially takes place from the 12th to the 15th of June, but I think we can expect other big announcements outside of those dates as well.
My usual caveat applies: I have no “insider information.” Today’s list is nothing more than guesswork and speculation, with a fair amount of hoping and fantasising thrown in for good measure! With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of my predictions (and wishes) for what we might see at this year’s E3!
Number 1: Starfield
Teaser logo for Starfield.
Bethesda’s next game has been common knowledge for years, and even while they’ve been working on Fallout 76 and porting Skyrim to smart fridges, development on this sci-fi role-playing game has continued. Rumour has it that Starfield is now edging closer to being complete, and it’s possible we could even see a release date announced at E3 – maybe even for later this year or the first half of next year.
Other than a sci-fi setting that may include some degree of space travel, actual information about Starfield has been hard to come by. The disappointment of Fallout 76, and Bethesda’s refusal to consider developing or licensing a new game engine to replace the outdated Gamebryo/Creation Engine that they’ve used for more than two decades, leaves me at least a little anxious about Starfield’s prospects, with any hype or excitement I might’ve felt at the latest big Bethesda release replaced by cautious interest. However, there’s potential in Starfield, and I hope that we’ll get a fantastic game.
Microsoft now owns Bethesda and all its current and upcoming games.
If Bethesda hadn’t learned their lesson following the calamitous launch of Fallout 76, December’s Cyberpunk 2077 catastrophe should serve as another reminder that players simply will not tolerate a broken, unfinished, “release now, fix later” mess. So as interested as I am to see Starfield, I’d very much rather that it was delayed if needs be. It would be great to see it at E3 and begin to get excited for its release, but only if it’s ready!
Bethesda has recently been acquired by Microsoft in a multi-billion dollar deal, so Starfield will almost certainly be announced as an Xbox and PC exclusive. Sorry PlayStation fans!
Number 2: Mario Kart 9
Is a new Mario Kart game coming soon?
I’ve talked about the possibility of a new Mario Kart game several times over the past few months here on the website, and the reason is simple: next year will be the Mario Kart series’ 30th anniversary. Nintendo loves to make a big deal of anniversaries, as we saw just a few months ago with the 35th anniversary of Super Mario. Although nothing is confirmed and I should point out that we don’t even know for sure that Mario Kart 9 is in development, putting the pieces together makes this one seem at least plausible!
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been the best-selling game on Nintendo Switch since it arrived on the platform, but it’s only a port of a Wii U game from 2014. After more than seven years, this is the longest dry spell the Mario Kart series has ever endured, and it seems like the perfect time to give the Switch its own original Mario Kart title.
2022 will be the series’ 30th anniversary.
As a celebration of all things Mario Kart, it would be great to see racetracks from past iterations return, as well as drivers from across Nintendo titles and even from other games altogether. If Mario Kart 9 is to be released in time for the anniversary next year, announcing it at E3 makes a lot of sense – building up the hype and giving fans plenty of time to get excited!
I’m not sure whether to classify this one as a wish or a prediction, because I feel certain that Nintendo will be doing something to mark the Mario Kart series’ anniversary – but will they announce it this month? We’ll have to see!
Number 3: Anything Star Trek
Could a new Star Trek game be on the horizon?
The Star Trek franchise has not done well in the gaming realm. In recent years, Star Trek Online has been the only game in town – literally – and as someone who isn’t big on massively multiplayer online games, it just isn’t “my thing.” I’d love to see ViacomCBS take advantage of Star Trek’s return to the small screen and commission a video game adaptation. Whether that would be something connected to a classic show or something based on modern Star Trek wouldn’t matter to me – though I could see the advantages of a game based on Discovery or Picard from the company’s perspective.
This is definitely a pure wish, because I’ve heard no rumours nor seen any indication that ViacomCBS has any plans to license out Star Trek in a big way. There are mobile games, the online game, and there was even a browser game earlier this year, but when it comes to putting together the kind of single-player title that I’d really love to see, the Star Trek franchise hasn’t shown any interest since the disastrous 2013 Kelvin timeline game.
2013’s Star Trek was not a good game, unfortunately.
It’s possible that that buggy, poorly-received title has harmed Star Trek’s brand from a gaming point of view, which is such a shame. There should be a pretty big overlap between Trekkies and gamers, but the franchise has consistently failed to capitalise on that, with Star Trek games going all the way back to the ’80s being of little interest to most folks.
If ViacomCBS could contract a big studio to put out the equivalent of a Jedi: Fallen Order or Mass Effect I’d be beyond thrilled. Will it happen at E3 – or ever? I have no idea. Probably not, but there’s always hope!
Number 4: Fall Guys coming to Switch and Xbox
Fall Guys is coming to Switch… eventually.
Though Fall Guys promised earlier in the year that a release on both Switch and Xbox is on the cards, there’s currently no release date on the schedule. Announcing one at E3 would be a big boost for the fun little obstacle course-battle royale game, and as I’ve said on a few occasions now, Nintendo Switch in particular feels like a perfect fit for Fall Guys.
There have been some improvements made to Fall Guys recently, like the addition of cross-platform play, the introduction of new rounds and round variants, and additional challenges that make logging in and playing more frequently feel rewarding. But there’s still a ways to go for Fall Guys if new owners Epic Games hope to break into the upper echelons of multiplayer gaming.
Hopefully Fall Guys will continue to improve – as well as finally be released on other platforms.
Fall Guys had “a moment” in August last year, in the days immediately following its release. But issues with cheating soured a lot of players on the game, and there’s work to do to rebuild both its reputation and playerbase. The announcement of Switch and Xbox versions of the game would bring renewed attention to Fall Guys, perhaps convincing lapsed players to pick it up again.
Though developers Mediatonic have stated that there are no current plans to make Fall Guys free-to-play, the delay in getting the Switch and Xbox versions ready makes me wonder if a bigger overhaul is on the cards. Announcing it at E3, with the eyes of players around the world on the games industry, would make a lot of sense and drum up plenty of hype.
Number 5: Knights of the Old Republic III/Knights of the High Republic
A new Knights of the Old Republic would make a lot of fans very happy indeed!
Rumours swirled earlier in the year of a new entry in the Knights of the Old Republic series of Star Wars role-playing games. Originally developed by BioWare, with a sequel created by Oblivion, the Knights of the Old Republic games are among my favourite games of all-time, and a sequel just sounds fantastic!
The Star Wars franchise is seemingly stepping away from its exclusive deal with Electronic Arts, so perhaps a studio like Oblivion could come back to pick up the mantle. Or we could learn that BioWare is coming back to the series that laid the groundwork for titles like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
These two games were just fantastic.
It’s been 17 years since Knights of the Old Republic II was released, so that could mean a new entry in the series won’t be a direct sequel and will instead focus on new characters. The so-called “High Republic” era is currently a big deal in Star Wars spin-off media, focusing on a time period about 300 years prior to the film series – and several millennia after Knights of the Old Republic. I can’t help but wonder if a new game could be Knights of the High Republic instead!
However, Knights of the Old Republic II definitely teased a sequel, and the stories of both Revan and the Jedi Exile are arguably incomplete (despite some mentions or appearances in the online multiplayer game The Old Republic). The Star Wars franchise has recently been in the habit of announcing games shortly before their launch – like last year’s Squadrons. If that happens again, maybe we’ll get a new Star Wars game later this year!
Number 6: Jedi: Fallen Order II
Jedi: Fallen Order was amazing.
Sticking with Star Wars, we know that Respawn Entertainment is currently working on a sequel to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order. Though development may have only begun in earnest when the success of the first game became apparent, it’s not inconceivable that there’ll be something concrete to show off at this year’s E3, even if the game isn’t coming any time soon.
Cal Kestis’ story could take a different direction in the sequel, as the end of the first game left things open-ended and with no clear destination. Jedi: Fallen Order introduced us to some amazing characters, and it’s going to be wonderful to find out what comes next for all of them. I doubt Jedi: Fallen Order II will be released this year – it may not even be released next year – but a little tease to keep fans interested is no bad thing at an event like this!
It would be great to see Cal and the gang return.
Jedi: Fallen Order definitively proved to companies that have been moving away from single-player titles that there’s still a lot of room for success and profit in the medium. That’s an incredibly positive legacy for any game, and after fans had been vocal about wanting a single-player, story-focused Star Wars game, the fact that it succeeded and sold millions of copies showed Electronic Arts and other big companies that it’s worth investing in this kind of title.
I’m happy to wait for Jedi: Fallen Order II. The original game was released without major bugs or glitches, something which should be expected but which won it a lot of praise in an industry where “release now, fix later” has almost become the norm. Rather than rush the sequel, I hope Respawn and EA take their time to give it the polish it deserves.
Number 7: Mass Effect 4
Promo art for Mass Effect 2.
It would make a lot of sense for BioWare and Electronic Arts to capitalise on the successful release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition to at least tease or hint at what’s coming next for the franchise. We know, thanks to an earlier announcement, that Mass Effect 4 is in early development, but aside from a cinematic teaser we know nothing about the next entry in the series.
One of the reasons Mass Effect: Andromeda didn’t succeed (aside from its bugs and launch issues) was that it ignored the ending of the third game and tried to do its own thing off to one side. The end of the Reaper War was a significant moment for the Mass Effect galaxy and its races, and piecing together what happens next is something many fans are interested in, despite the disappointment many felt at the three ending options for Mass Effect 3.
With the Reaper War over, where will the drama and action come from in Mass Effect 4?
Mass Effect 4 has a difficult task. It has to follow on from an epic “war to end all wars” type of story in a way that doesn’t feel anticlimactic and small. That’s not going to be easy, and I can understand why BioWare instead chose to tell a side-story in Andromeda instead of trying to confront this challenge head-on. With the game in development, though, I assume they’ve figured something out!
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition can be seen as a test or a dry run for a new game, and judging by the success it’s seen over the last couple of weeks, I have no doubt that a new entry in the series will be highly anticipated by fans.
Number 8: Grand Theft Auto 6
After almost a decade, surely a new Grand Theft Auto game can’t be too far away?
For too long Rockstar have been milking Grand Theft Auto V’s online mode, and it’s time for a change. After the longest gap between games in the history of the franchise, a new title in the open-world crime saga is long overdue, and it would be great to get some kind of news – even just the tiniest tease – at E3.
Rockstar has already committed to porting Grand Theft Auto V to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X, diverting time, money, and development resources away from making a new game. I’ve said before that Grand Theft Auto V has run its course by now, and the disappointed reaction from fans to news of a port to new consoles backs that up. It’s high time for a new title.
Grand Theft Auto V’s port to new hardware left many players upset.
Will it happen, though? I mean it will eventually happen, of course; there’s too much money in the brand to let it end with Grand Theft Auto V. But despite the fact that some players have been vocal about wanting a new title, Rockstar has thus far shown no signs of working on a sequel. In some ways, perhaps the success of Grand Theft Auto V has become a problem for the franchise; the more time passes, the harder it will be for any sequel to live up to its illustrious predecessor.
Finding a way for Grand Theft Auto 6 to differentiate itself from the current iteration of the series is also a challenge. Another sunlit coastal city in the present day probably won’t cut it – so where should Rockstar take the series? Maybe we’ll see the first indications soon!
Number 9: Civilization VII
Promo screenshot of Civilization VI.
It’s been almost five years since the release of Civilization VI, so it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a new entry in the series is in development. The most recent expansion pack for Civilization VI – titled the New Frontier pass – may be the game’s last, with no further announcements of DLC coming since last year. Perhaps Firaxis has already begun to shift development to a new game?
I was pleasantly surprised by Civilization VI when I picked it up in 2016. Having not been a big fan of previous turn-based strategy games I was initially sceptical, but I’m glad I took the plunge! I ended up sinking hundreds of hours into Civilization VI as the last decade drew to a close, and there’s a lot to be said for the series.
The Civilization series has come a long way since its inception in the early 1990s!
A new game would shake up the formula without reinventing the wheel, introducing different ways to play or bringing back successful features from past entries in the series. There would also be the potential to introduce brand-new factions and leaders – a subject I took a look at a few weeks ago.
Series like Civilization, which don’t see annual releases, can sometimes cause controversy if a new entry is regarded as being released “too soon” after the previous one. But the Civilization franchise has usually put out a new game roughly every four to five years on average, so the time could be coming for a new entry.
Number 10: Xbox Game Pass
Xbox Game Pass is a great and inexpensive way to get access to a large library of titles.
Game Pass has taken off over the last few months, and is one of the most compelling arguments in favour of buying an Xbox right now, as well as offering a relatively inexpensive way into gaming in general. Microsoft will be making a big appearance at E3, and I can’t help but wonder what news they’ll have regarding Game Pass.
Some have suggested that a deal might be on the table to bring Xbox Game Pass to Nintendo Switch or even PlayStation; I’m not sure that’s practical considering the divide between Microsoft and Sony in particular, but you never know! After Bethesda and EA Play have both brought significant libraries of games to the service in recent months, I’m beginning to wonder what’s left for Microsoft to possibly add!
EA, Bethesda, and more… Game Pass continues to grow!
Regardless, I’m sure that any titles Microsoft show off, including big Bethesda titles like Starfield or even The Elder Scrolls VI, will be coming to Game Pass, so that’s a good start. But using the opportunity of E3 to really push the service and show how it’s continuing to expand would be great from Microsoft’s perspective.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles are still sold out everywhere, but there seem to be more Xbox Series S consoles available at the moment. Game Pass also makes picking up a pre-owned Xbox One a pretty good proposition in the short term, so Microsoft has a lot of scope this month to hook in and convert players to their platform – and Game Pass is the way to do it.
Number 11: Halo Infinite
Halo Infinite was delayed, but it’s still being worked on.
Speaking of Microsoft and Xbox, following a disappointing reveal last year, Halo Infinite was postponed. Originally the game was supposed to be the Xbox Series S/X’s flagship launch title, but as I predicted at the time, its absence ultimately didn’t prove a huge hurdle for the new console’s launch.
Since original developer Bungie abandoned the Halo series to pursue Destiny in 2010, the series has struggled to hit the highs of earlier titles. Halo 4 and Halo 5 were both well-received by some fans but disliked by others, and there’s a sense that the Halo series really needs a win with its next iteration. I fully support developers 343 Industries delaying the project and taking the necessary time to bash it into shape. Maybe we’ll see what they’ve been working on at E3!
Promo art for the Halo series.
With a Halo television series also in the works, it should be a good time to be a fan of the sci-fi shooter series. Hopefully the issues with Infinite have been ironed out, and even if there’s still no definite word on when it’ll be released, there will be something to show off to tide fans over and restore hope in the series’ future.
I enjoyed playing Halo and Halo 2 back on the original Xbox, and I’ve recently had fun with The Master Chief Collection on PC, which included a couple of titles I hadn’t played. I’m interested to see what Infinite will bring to the table.
Number 12: Elden Ring
A figure from the Elden Ring teaser trailer.
I have to be honest: I’m not sure if Elden Ring is going to be “my kind of thing.” Don’t get me wrong, I like George R R Martin – who’s working with developer FromSoftware on the project – but the teaser trailer gave off a kind of horror vibe that just rubbed me the wrong way, I guess.
I’m also not a fan of FromSoftware’s “extreme difficulty for the sake of it” style of gameplay. There’s no indication that Elden Ring will be as horribly difficult as the likes of Dark Souls, but the developer’s reputation precedes them, and their unwillingness to add difficulty options in their games is not something I appreciate. For those reasons and more it may end up being a game I skip!
A rather creepy moment from the teaser trailer.
Despite that, I like the idea of a new dark fantasy role-playing game. The involvement of George R R Martin has a lot of fans understandably excited, as he’s one of the best authors working in the genre today. Other than that, and a short cinematic teaser, we don’t know very much at all about Elden Ring – so this could be the moment for Bandai Namco to finally show off some gameplay!
If I were being hopeful, I guess I’d say that I’d like to see a darker, more polished looking version of The Elder Scrolls, with plenty of side-missions, lots of factions to join or fight against, and a main story that can be played through right away or sidelined in favour of doing other things. Whether Elden Ring will be anything like that, or whether it’ll be closer to Dark Souls is anyone’s guess at the moment!
Number 13: Super Mario 64 remake
Battling Bowser in HD? Yes please!
This is a game that I truly felt was a possibility last year, when Nintendo was marking the 35th anniversary of the Super Mario series. Ultimately the company opted to include a pretty crappy version of Super Mario 64 – with a weird screen resolution that left black bars on all four sides of the screen – as part of the underwhelming Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection.
But maybe the rumours of a reimagining of this classic 3D platformer from 1996 weren’t just made up! Maybe Super Mario 64 is being remade using the engine from Super Mario Odyssey, and maybe it’ll be announced this month! Maybe.
Super Mario 3D All-Stars did not do justice to this game. A full remake would be amazing, though!
There are relatively few games that I’d be really excited to see remade, because in a lot of cases – especially when dealing with relatively recent games – the original versions still hold up pretty well. But after 25 years, there’s definitely scope to remake Super Mario 64, bringing it up-to-date for a new generation of players.
With the game’s 25th anniversary happening this year, perhaps Nintendo’s love of anniversary events will have convinced them it’s worth putting together a remake! Either way, if you can find a copy the original game is well worth playing if you missed it first time around.
Number 14: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Teaser art for Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
The third Star Wars title on this list is a fun one! Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was originally due for release last year, before being delayed. The game will be a follow-up to the very successful 2007 game Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, which if you haven’t played I can’t recommend highly enough!
The chance to revisit the Star Wars world with a fun Lego twist – in high definition, this time – has been appealing since The Skywalker Saga was announced a couple of years ago, and this is one game I’m definitely looking forward to. When it was delayed there was mention of a 2021 release, but no date or even release window has yet been elaborated on. Maybe E3 could be the right moment!
Rey and Kylo Ren clash in another promo screenshot for the game.
Though they arguably overdid it and burned out somewhere in the late 2000s or early 2010s, Lego adaptations of popular franchises have been a lot of fun. Lego Star Wars was one of the first to really go mainstream and see big success, but other titles which adapted properties like Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean were good fun as well.
It would be great to get a solid release date and see a little more of the game. Adapting all nine films in the Star Wars series into a single game is no mean feat, but it’s a challenge that developer Traveller’s Tales has never shied away from. I’m sure that The Skywalker Saga will prove to be a worthy successor to previous Lego Star Wars titles.
So that’s it! A few of my predictions – and wishes – for this month’s E3.
The official E3 2021 logo.
Could you tell which were predictions and which were wishes? I’m not sure I could tell you which were which in every case, so don’t worry! After a rough year, which hasn’t been helped by myriad delays and shortages, it’ll be nice to see players getting genuinely excited about upcoming titles once again. Whatever is ultimately announced or revealed, I’m sure there’ll be something of interest to me, something I can put on my wishlist for later in the year!
Though I’ve never been to E3, I did attend two iterations of GamesCom – Europe’s biggest games fair – in the past when I used to work for a large games company. As I said last year, these digital events are arguably the future of games marketing. Not only are they substantially cheaper than paying to rent a convention centre in California, but it gives the companies greater control over their own messaging. Though the headline this year is “E3 is back!” I would argue that it isn’t – not really. E3 was an in-person event, an overblown trade fair that started allowing members of the public to attend. What we’re going to see this month will be all-digital and quite different.
I hope this was a bit of fun as we look ahead to E3. There are plenty of upcoming games to get excited about, and I shall be watching the various presentations with interest!
All titles mentioned above are the trademark or copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Some screenshots and promotional artwork courtesy of press kits on IGDB. E3 2021 takes place digitally from the 12th to the 15th of June, with additional events taking place throughout the month of June. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise, including minor spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3.
The Star Trek franchise has not been particularly well-served in the video game realm, especially in recent years. With the exception of Star Trek Online, which continues to receive updates, there hasn’t been a major release since 2017’s Bridge Crew. Both Online and Bridge Crew are somewhat niche titles, too, with the former being a massively multiplayer online game and the latter being a title designed with virtual reality in mind.
There have been a couple of new smaller games released this year, including free browser game Star Trek: Kobayashi Maru and Star Trek Legends for Apple Arcade, but considering the renewed popularity the franchise is currently enjoying, it feels as though there’s potential for ViacomCBS to do more with Star Trek as a video game franchise.
Star Trek: Kobayashi Maru is a free browser game. And it’s pretty good!
Star Trek Online was originally launched in 2010, and while the game is still being supported at time of writing, surely its lifespan is limited and it will eventually come to an end. The only other significant release really in the last decade has been the awful 2013 Star Trek action/adventure title, which was so badly-received that director JJ Abrams criticised it, fearing it actually harmed Star Trek Into Darkness when it was released that same year.
In this article I’m going to suggest five potential Star Trek video game ideas, and we’re going to consider different ways that the franchise could make a new attempt to score a hit in the gaming realm – something that hasn’t happened in a long time! Two of the biggest and most successful Star Trek video games that I can recall were 2000’s Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary last year, and the Star Trek: Armada duology of real-time strategy titles which were also released around the turn of the millennium.
As always, caveats apply! I’m not saying that these games will ever be made, and I don’t have any “insider information!” This is just a wishlist from a fan. Nothing more.
Number 1:Star Trek: First Contact
A Borg drone seen in First Contact.
I’ve already proposed a First Contact tie-in once before, but this time I want to hone in on one particular aspect of my suggestion from a few months ago. In short, First Contact – which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year – would make for an excellent first-person shooter title with horror elements. Think Star Trek’s answer to Doom Eternal and you’re in the right sort of area!
Players would take on the role of a security officer aboard the Enterprise-E during the mission to Earth, and this character could be customisable which would be a nice touch. After arriving in the past, the player character would be one of the security officers tasked with holding the line and retaking the lower decks of the ship from the Borg as they attempt to assimilate the Enterprise-E and prevent first contact from taking place.
An Enterprise-E security officer firing his phaser rifle.
Though the main cast of the film would be present at points, the game wouldn’t necessarily have to follow the entire story directly. This would be a looser adaptation, with a focus on the battle for the lower decks of the Enterprise-E while Picard, Riker, and co. are busy with the main plot of the film. This would allow for maximum storytelling leeway, and I think a fun and engaging story could be written depicting the fight between Starfleet survivors and the Borg, which was something we saw parts of in the film but not the entire thing.
The first mission might take place during the Battle of Sector 001, and the player character could be present for significant moments like the holodeck scene with Picard and Lily, or even the spacewalk to prevent the Borg using the main deflector. In addition, the narrow hallways of the Enterprise-E, as well as jeffries tubes, catwalks, and even areas of the ship we haven’t seen like nacelle tubes would all make for dangerous and scary enclosed spaces to battle the Borg!
Number 2:Star Trek: Discovery
The USS Discovery.
As Discovery approaches its fourth season later this year, it’s not unfair to say the series has well and truly established itself in the franchise! As the series which brought Star Trek back to television after a twelve-year break, Discovery has been flying the flag for Star Trek for almost four years now. Some Discovery characters have been included in Star Trek Online, but it would be wonderful to see the series get its own video game adaptation.
Though there are many different ways a Discovery game could go, I feel like a third-person action/adventure title would be a great fit. Think Star Trek meets Uncharted or Jedi: Fallen Order and you’re on the right track! A game with a strong focus on story and with mysteries and puzzles to solve along the way would suit this game perfectly, and while it could be connected to either the Control story or the Burn, perhaps an altogether new and original storyline would work even better.
Michael Burnham would be the game’s protagonist.
Players would, of course, take on the role of Michael Burnham. However, at points in the game it would be possible to assemble away teams, picking up at least two other characters to join Burnham on her mission. Games like the Mass Effect series worked well with three-person squads, and adapting it to work here would be great.
The game could be set in either of Discovery’s time periods, but the 32nd Century naturally allows for the most storytelling options, as there’s nothing in canon to constrain it. The game could bring back familiar Star Trek races that haven’t been seen since past iterations of the franchise, and all of this could be done without treading on the toes of anything the series wants to do on television. Tying a game into an ongoing series makes a lot of sense, and while it isn’t something we see every television show try to do any more, it would still be a fun idea.
Number 3:Star Trek: Armada III
A sequel to this game would be fantastic!
I mentioned the Star Trek: Armada games earlier, and they were great fun to play around the turn of the millennium. The real-time strategy titles – of which there were two – played similarly to games like Age of Empires, and there were campaigns to get stuck into as well as random matches. Star Trek: Armada II in particular became a LAN party favourite for a couple of friends and I, and we played it regularly!
In addition to starships that could fight, part of Armada II involved base-building and resource collecting, with different kinds of ships and space stations required to research, build, and maintain the fighting ships. There were different factions to choose from as well, which is a must for this kind of title.
A screenshot of Star Trek: Armada II.
Armada III could pick up where the earlier games left off in the early 2000s, with a setting around the 2370s-80s. Or it could be set in the 23rd Century to connect with Strange New Worlds, with factions like the Klingons, Tholians, and Gorn. Alternatively, a 32nd Century setting would be an option, with the rump Federation and factions like the Emerald Chain and Ni’Var.
Regardless, I’d keep the real-time strategy gameplay more or less unchanged, with options for deathmatches and a single-player campaign. There are plenty of real-time strategy titles at the moment, with the genre going strong. There’s no reason why a new Armada title couldn’t be one of them!
Number 4: The Dominion War
A Jem’Hadar attack ship.
If Armada III would be a real-time strategy game, I imagine that the Dominion War could be adapted to make a wonderful grand strategy title. If you can imagine Star Trek mixed with the likes of the Total War series, you’re on the right page.
The Dominion War is perfect for this kind of grand strategy game, and players would have the choice of siding with either the Dominion and Cardassians or the Federation Alliance. The game would depict the entire war from beginning to end, starting with the loss of DS9 and concluding with the Battle of Cardassia… or the Dominion conquest of Earth!
Earth seen in Discovery Season 3. Think you could conquer it if you were in charge of Dominion forces?
Both factions would change as the game wore on, with the Romulans joining the Federation alliance midway, and the Breen throwing in with the Dominion about two-thirds of the way into the campaign. Perhaps, though, these events would not be set in stone, and failing to achieve certain objectives or keep key characters alive would mean the new allies don’t join.
The game would be similar to Total War titles in that there’d be an overall campaign map, but players would also be able to dive in and participate in individual battles. Pre-made battles or randomly created ones could be available to play in multiplayer as well, though the main campaign would be a single-player experience.
Number 5: An open world title
A map of the galaxy seen in Discovery Season 3.
Perhaps the expression “open galaxy” would be more appropriate! It would actually be tricky to create a true open world in a Star Trek game, unless the action was to take place entirely on a single planet. But in the vein of games like the Mass Effect series or Knights of the Old Republic, perhaps a role-playing/adventure game could be created with multiple planets to visit.
Players would have their own starship or runabout to command, along with a variety of potential recruits to join their crew, giving this game a “Mass Effect meets Star Trek” kind of feel. In addition to a main quest, which would see players tasked with defeating some kind of nefarious villain, there would be many smaller missions and side-quests allowing for plenty of opportunities for Star Trek fun.
A Mass Effect-style game in the Star Trek galaxy? Yes please!
I imagine the player character would be a Starfleet officer, given a “covert ops” assignment and sent on their way with minimal interference from Starfleet command, which would account for the large degree of player choice on offer. Though there would be a main story to follow, a big part of the fun of open world titles is exploring the map, discovering fun locations and side-missions, and getting lost in the world.
Star Trek has what I consider to be the best world-building of any franchise, so crafting a game that took advantage of the deep lore that the Star Trek galaxy offers should be something achievable. Giving players a practically blank slate to create a character and take them on their own Star Trek adventure sounds amazing, and I bet a game like this would win the franchise new fans.
So that’s it. Five ideas for future Star Trek video games.
Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force (2000).
Star Trek video games, unlike comparable titles in the Star Wars franchise, have never really hit the mainstream in a big way. There have been some successes: Voyager – Elite Force had a moment in the year 2000 where it was popular with PC gamers, for example. But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that most Star Trek games have really only appealed to hardcore Trekkies. Finding a way to reach out beyond that is key to the success of any future title.
That doesn’t mean ViacomCBS should jump on some of the gaming industry’s fads or worst trends, but I think it does mean that, if they’re going to go to the expense of developing a video game, it should be one that has more than just niche appeal. I’ve mostly considered single-player games, because those are my personal favourites in most cases, but as Star Trek Online has shown, there is room for multiplayer experiences as well.
Star Trek is currently enjoying a renaissance, and if this continues it’s not implausible to think that future Trekkies might look back on the 2020s as a “golden age” of Star Trek in the same way fans of my generation look back on the ’90s! Video games aren’t essential to Star Trek’s success going forward, but the medium continues to grow and there’s a huge degree of crossover between Trekkies and gamers, so taking advantage of that and producing a high-quality, engaging game that’s fun and easy for new fans to get stuck into seems like a no-brainer to me. I’d dearly love to see a new Star Trek game some time soon – and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed!
All video games mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, publisher, etc. The Star Trek franchise – including all titles mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 