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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Trekking with Dennis 