My Attempt to Play Every Star Trek Game

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: Encounters

• Original Release: 2006
• Developer: 4J Studios
• Publisher: Bethesda
• Platform: PS2

This is a sort of tie in game to Star Trek Legacy for the PlayStation 2 – a cheap game thrown at the older generation console while all the effort was focused on the Xbox 360. This game does though all the Star Trek shows, from Enterprise to Voyager, along with a campaign called “Star Trek: Sovereign” featuring the Enterprise E.

The game is an arcade twin stick shooter. Left analogue stick moves, right analogue stick shoots. While it’s a simple game, the controls are convoluted: the left shoulder buttons change height, you have to swap between phasers, torpedoes and other abilities. What should have been really easy is now a pain due to the control setup, and the change in height makes almost no difference to the game.

While a lot of the game is shooting, you’ll encounter various obstacles to padd the game such as racing through rings or following warp trails by moving between glowy things within a short time (which is far more annoying than it sounds). The missions themselves are sometimes very loosely based on stuff that happens in the show, but also really off (like the Xindi invading Earth in the Enterprise missions). Others are slightly unique, such as the Enterprise D encountering a giant lifeform and getting sucked into it.

The missions start with a short briefing from an extremely bored William Shatner, with no other voice acting (and zero actual dialogue) in the game, your next objective just pops up in generic sounding text. This couples with how ships move makes it feel like you’re playing with toy ships. Similar to how there are LEGO games, this would feel much better if it was called “Micro Machines Star Trek”.

Star Trek: Conquest

• Original Release: 2007
• Developer: 4J Studios
• Publisher: Bethesda
• Platform: Wii, PS2

Conquest is a budget 4x strategy game that has a board game feel about it. You pick a race, build fleets, conquer systems and gain more resources to build more stuff.

The maps itself is quite small with only a few spaces between each homeworld, which means it’s quick to get into fights. On top of this, each neutral system starts off with enemies you have to fight before you can use it.

There are multiple options for the combat. You can skip straight for the results, watch the battle play out on the menu (with you being able to set offensive or defensive modes) or play the battles out in an arcade style. This is very similar to Encounters, being a twin stick shooter, but is thankfully much nicer to control. It’s fun for a little bit, but does get tiresome.

The main game has some nice ideas, and the simplicity does help it. You’re limited to three fleets to move around, and they must be in different locations. You also have superweapons that charge up to attack (or heal). Unfortunately, the game itself is not well balanced. The maps are pre-designed based around the players and races involved, and some races can have a lot more space to expand before encountering opponents. The Dominion homeworld is also very easy to defend with one route to it, including having Deep Space Nine as a strong station standing in the way.

Conquest does feel a bit like a side game from a bigger release, but for a small budget release it’s not too bad – I do think XBLA would have been an ideal platform for it.

Star Trek All About Trivia

• Original Release: 2007
• Developer: Fundex
• Publisher: Fundex
• Platform: Board Game
• Not played: Not enough information to recreate.

A trivia game with many questions about The Original Series. You roll the dice and answer a question from the category you land on. If you get it correct, you take another turn.

Each player also has three “communicator” cards that allow them to skip a question and try a new one from the next card.

Once a player reaches the last space, the opposing players choose what category the player has to play.

Star Trek Online (Perpetual Entertainment)

• Original Release: N/A (Cancelled 2008)
• Developer: Perpetual Entertainment
• Publisher: Perpetual Entertainment
• Original Platform: PC
• Not played: No leaked prototypes.

This version of Star Trek Online was in development by Perpetual Entertainment. The game was due to a lot of focus on non-combat activities such as planetary surveys and diplomatic activities (although there would be plenty of combat, too).

Players could only own small ships to trave on their own. The bigger ships – such as the Galaxy class and Sovereign class – were large social hubs with detailed interiors where you would be a member of the crew.

The story was set 20 years after Nemesis, where the galaxy was at relative peace and even the Borg weren’t a huge threat. It was focused on exploring the Beta Quadrant and one of the main NPCs would have been Miral Paris, who influenced a lot more Klingons to join Starfleet, especially those that believe her to be the kuvah’magh (this part was kept in the Cryptic version).

Developing your character would be about specialising in certain fields, such as medical or flight control, and gain skills that would help in a variety of different situation.

There was even an ambition of Star Trek Online leading to a TV show, with player’s actions in the game impacting the show. This concept was tried again by a different Sci-Fi show, Defiance, but the “influence” ended up not amounting to much.

When this version of Star Trek Online was cancelled in 2008 (with all development staff sacked), the game’s assets were given to Cryptic Studios, who used it as a basis for their version, but ultimately decided on a different path. There was also a stipulation that the new version had to be released within two years.

Star Trek: D-A-C

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: Naked Sky
• Publisher: Paramount Digital
• Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

D-A-C stands for “Deathmatch, Assault, Conquest”, the three game modes in this arcade ship shooter. I couldn’t get the game to run on PC, and because absolutely nobody cares about this game, couldn’t find any methods to try, so I tried the Xbox 360 version.

You play as Federation or Romulans from the Star Trek 2009 film (even though the only Romulans involved are from the future), each with three classes of ships: Fighters which play like a twin stick shooter, bombers which drop mines behind them and flagships which have crosshairs that they move across the screen to aim. The deluxe and PC versions added a few more, but they don’t change much.

The ships control light one-man fighters, and when you die you launch an escape pod (which is not much smaller than the ship itself) and if you survive, you respawn quicker. It feel like this game was designed as a new IP before having Star Trek quickly thrown on top. Other than the great title screen music (taken from the film), nothing feels remotely Star Trek.

Other than the escape pod mechanic, there’s nothing interesting about the game itself. Deathmatch is deathmatch, and Assault and Conquest are just variants of King of the Hill. The game later got a survival mode of just defeating waves of enemies.

Star Trek: The Mobile Game (Java Button)

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: EA Mobile
• Publisher: EA
• Platform: Java (Button Phones)

Star Trek: The Mobile Game. It’s everything you expect a cheap java Star Trek to be: a vertical scrolling bullet hell shooter. While The Birds of Prey was a fun take on the genre, this is just mindless and dull, even though there’s so much happening on the screen.

Your ship automatically fires (you can turn this off, but then you’re just tapping a button constantly as there’s no reason not to) fighting through hoards of Klingon, Cardassian and Romulan forces. While this is set in the Kelvin timeline, all enemy designs are from the TNG era shows.

As you complete missions, you can upgrade the Enterprise to make it shoot faster or have more health. There are different power ups to collect, which work just like any other space shooter like this, with powerful screen-filling weapons.

Star Trek: The Mobile Game (Java Touch)

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: EA Mobile
• Publisher: EA
• Platform: Java (Touch Phones)

The version of Star Trek: The Mobile Game is similar to the version made for button phones, but does have changes. The game is much, much slower, with lots more space to move around as the view is zoomed out and the visible area is wider. It doesn’t make the game any better, just worse in every way.

Star Trek: The Mobile Game (iOS)

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: EA Mobile
• Publisher: EA
• Platform: iOS
• Not played: Do not own compatible device.

The version of Star Trek: The Mobile Game for iPhone is essentially a nicer looking version of the button Java version. The enemy layouts are exactly the same, as well as the pace of the game. The graphics look more 3D, with a bit more depth to everything.

Delta Vega: Meltdown on the Ice Planet

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: Esurance
• Publisher: Esurance
• Platform: Browser
• Not played: Flash file can’t be found online.

In the advertising campaign for the Star Trek 2009 movie, advertising partners were sought to promote the film. One of them was Esurance, an American insurance company. They produced a flash game starring their mascot, Erin Esurance, called Delta Vega: Meltdown on the Ice Planet.

In the game, you shot your way though five levels of enemies (which consisted of random creatures) in order to rescue Keenser from the outpost we see from the film.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the game itself, and there aren’t even many screenshots of it.

 

[publiusr]

You do good detective work.

The folks behind these games deserve remembrance

 

[James Swallow]

So I was the scriptwriter on this game (I actually worked on it a few years before I started writing Star Trek novels)...

Star Trek: Invasion

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Warthog Games
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PlayStation

Star Trek Invasion is a space combat game developed for the PlayStation. Targeting a more casual audience than other Star Trek games, this game has you flying around in single-person fighters.

...and I just wanted to address this comment:

The story feels like a jumbled mess. While the opening cutscene shows a massive Borg invasion, this is a trivial part of the story, instead it focuses on a mysterious new alien species that have been accidentally awakened by a Federation ship. That said, the story itself jumps around different scenarios, with you dealing with Cardassians, then the Borg, then this new species. The levels don’t flow. In one mission you fight the borg in deep space, the next you protect the Typhon (the carrier ship that transports the fighters) because it has sustained damage in battle, but it’s suddenly falling into a star.

There's a good reason for that: all the levels in the game were designed and implemented first, and only then was I hired on to build a story that connected them! I did my best to do so (on a very short deadline), but ultimately the narrative is still disjointed. The producers wanted Borg, Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans and even Gomtuu from "Tin Man" in there, even though those scenarios don't dovetail with the main plot-line.

Still, I got to write for Patrick Stewart and Michael Dorn, and I learned a lot working on Star Trek: Invasion (it was my first videogame project); the biggest lesson was have a writer involved from the start of production, not at the end!

 

[jackoverfull]

Just remembered about a game I’ve not seen in this post.

It was a flash game I found around 2001 on one of those flash games sites that used to be around, it was set in the TNG era and worked similarly to the classic Escape Velocity, you could warp to several systems and fight the Klingons, the dominion and so on, you started in a shuttle but could upgrade to better ships later on. Any idea on what it was?

 

[Cube1701]

So I was the scriptwriter on this game (I actually worked on it a few years before I started writing Star Trek novels)...


...and I just wanted to address this comment:

It's great to hear from someone that worked on the game. With the context you given, you definitely did a great job with what you had to work with.

It was a flash game I found around 2001 on one of those flash games sites that used to be around, it was set in the TNG era and worked similarly to the classic Escape Velocity, you could warp to several systems and fight the Klingons, the dominion and so on, you started in a shuttle but could upgrade to better ships later on. Any idea on what it was?

I'm not sure about that one. There are some fan-made flash games that I haven't touched, so might be one of them.

Star Trek: Cadet Training Facility

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: Nokia/Verizon
• Publisher: Nokia/Verizon
• Platform: Browse

This Star Trek 09 promotional flash game was made in conjunction with Nokia and Verizon, it consisted of four minigames: Engineering Simulator, Weapons Simulator, Helm Simulator and Captain’s Test (although Captain’s Test doesn’t work).

Engineering Simulator has you fixing the warp core by unscrambling images from the film in a sliding block puzzle format.

In Weapons Simulator, a comet has hit a planet and you have to blast the debris caused by it, shooting your way though five rounds.

In Helm Simulator, a ship has come though a wormhole (strangely, a Defiant Class ship, not a design used in the film). You automatically fly towards it and have to dodge asteroids and hit glowy things to get propelled forwards.

It’s a fairly basic minigame collection, trying to get you to watch the film and buy an old school flip phone.

Star Trek: Academy Trainer

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: AddictingGames
• Publisher: Paramount
• Platform: Browser

This is a minigame collection that supposedly tests what cadets need to do at Starfleet Academy, including some extremely difficult spot the difference puzzles which will end up costing you a lot of points.

It starts off with a game where you have to match the colours of wires, then spot the difference, then you have to click to stop pulsating bars at the right position. Next is a maze where you have to move an “unstable atom” by dragging discs across the screen, followed by a terrible breakout/Arkanoid clone. Then some simple maths, more spot the difference, the memory game pairs and finally a shooting game where you blow up lots of glowing discs.

It’s a pretty bad minigame collection.

Scene It? Star Trek

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: Mattel
• Publisher: Mattel
• Platform: Board Game

The Scene It? series of trivia games mixes question cards with visual quizzes via a DVD included with the package. They all follow the same rules.

On your turn, you roll the two dice. One shows how many spaces you use, the second shows which category you need to answer a question for. If you get the answer correct, you’ll get to take another turn.

Two of the categories, MyPlay and AllPlay, involve the DVD. MyPlay shows you clips form the shows and movies then asks you a question about it, while AllPlay has a voice clip or a distorted image and all players can answer, the quickest will get to take the next turn.

Once you reach the end of the board, you have to answer three questions right before answering one final AllPlay question.

The Scene it? franchise is kind of fascinating, as it seems like it was heavily marketed as something to buy as a gift. I think it says a lot that it’s easier and cheaper to buy a sealed copy of this game than it is a used one.

That said, I am surprised that nobody has made a quiz-like game in the style of Jackbox where people use their phones to answer questions. You could have some basic categories while selling licensed packs as DLC. It would have a lot less setup time, people can play while relaxing on a sofa and it could potentially allow a mix of questions or even assign themes to different people, so you don’t need everyone to know one franchise really well.

Monopoly: Star Trek Continuum Edition

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: Hasbro
• Publisher: Hasbro
• Platform: Board Game

The third Star Trek Monopoly game, covering all shows up to Enterprise. This doesn’t have the wormhole mechanic from The Next Generation Monopoly, and even just includes the basic house/hotel pieces from monopoly instead of custom ones.

Star Trek Scrabble

• Original Release: 2009
• Developer: Fudex
• Publisher: Fundex
• Platform: Board Game

This version of Scabble can just be played on a regular Scrabble board. The tile distribution and board layout are exactly the same as regular scrabble (except that the Triple Word Score spaces are now called Tribble Word Score, but still triples your store). What makes this different is that it comes with a list of 79 words that can be played for additional points. KYLE, PIKE and EKOS will get you 5 extra points, BAILEY, EYMORG and PONFARR get you 10 points while SCOTTY, ANDORIA and BONES will get you 20 points. On top of this, if you play any word from The Klingon Dictionary, you get 15 points.

Star Trek Online

• Original Release: 2010
• Developer: Cryptic Studios
• Publisher: Atari, Perfect World, Gearbox
• Platform: PC, Xbox One/Series, PlayStation 4/5.

I’ve played a lot of Star Trek Online in the past, so for this playthough I decided to start from scratch on Xbox. The game is still evolving with gameplay changes and new content, so my thought here are based on my original time with the game from a while ago on PC, along with finishing up to the end of the Delta Quadrant on Xbox.

The gameplay for this game is best described as “serviceable”. It’s not terrible, but it also isn’t the most exciting. It gets the job done and is just about entertaining enough to get you to the next part of the game. In space combat, you have to keep an eye on shield arcs and weapon charge while activating powers, while on the ground it plays a bit more like a shooter, but doesn’t have exact aiming (you can also play as a more traditional MMO game on PC).

The main enjoyment I got from the game was the story, having a few dialogue choices (even though they change nothing) and just interreacting with the world. The overall story arc is about a mysterious threat pushing people into war and being discovered before everyone starts banding together to investigate and stop them. Early on, voiced dialogue was rare, but is not much more common, although some missions have sections where the dialogue is just text, which creates an odd mixture of the two. There are lots of references and a lot of characters from the shows crop up, usually voiced by the same actor.

The mission lengths vary a massive amount, and you really have no idea how long a mission will be before starting it. Some just involve talking to one person while others can be a few hours long. Some can be just combat after combat (sometimes massively overstaying its welcome as wave after wave of enemies turn up) while others are more story based with lots of information to reveal, characters to interact with and puzzles to solve – these ones are worth playing the game for.

At certain ranks you get awarded a ship, you can pick a name and registry. I decided to call all mine the USS Saru, adding letters as I got new ships. You only have a choice between a few ships, while the rest you’ll have to grind by collecting dilithium or pay for with their premium currency of “Zen” – there are a lot of different currencies in the game, which kind of goes against Star Trek a lot. By the end of my playthough, I had enough dilithium for one ship.

What is nice about the ships is that you can customise them, choosing different hulls, saucers, pylons and nacelles, as well as some hull designs. Some options are locked behind premium currency, though. I ended up changing all of my ships. I would absolutely love a new game similar to Starship Creator that just let you design ships using all of the options available in Star Trek Online.

There’s plenty of Star Trek Online that I didn’t such, such as the group activities. I do remember doing a few missions in he past, including one where you fly through a massive Voth ships that is so large that it has multiple hangar bays that carry Voth city ships. There’s other kind of repeatable missions to help grind for upgrades, which is something I really don’t enjoy.

I enjoyed my time with Star Trek Online, but at towards the end of the Delta Quadrant missions I felt extremely underpowered (while up until a few missions prior, I felt overpowered) and even buying a new ship didn’t help much. I think I had reached the point of grinding or coughing up money.

You can choose not only different factions in the game (although later missions mostly are the same for all), but different introductions. A major one is the New Romulus faction, who can then join the Federation or Klingons after their starting missions. I tried out the Discovery era missions (you end up forward in time to carry on with the main campaign) and enjoyed it, you get to interact with Lorca. The tutorial mission is just a slightly reworked version of the normal tutorial, but at least you get to meet captain Shran. The ship you use also has one of the nicest bridges in the game (the ship interiors are terrible for the most part). I do appreciate that you essentially get to play a short Discovery game.

I don’t think I will return to Star Trek Online, though, due to the game’s economy and grinding. Once development for the game slows down, I would certainly be very interested in a one-off purchase “Star Trek Offline”.

Star Trek Online Architect

• Original Release: 2010
• Developer: The Game Agency
• Publisher: Atari
• Platform: Browser

This was a flash browser game made to promote Star Trek Online. I initially thought that this was a lost game, until someone kindly pointed me to Newgrounds, where it’s listed under the name “Star Trek Ship Builder”.

The game is deceptively simple: an outline of ship parts will appear and components will scroll past quite fast. You need to drag the right ones to the main screen. The better you do, the more time and points you gain. It’s surprisingly difficult but simple fun.

Star Trek: Fleet Captains

• Original Release: 2011
• Developer: Mike Elliott, Bryan Kinsella, Ethan Pasternack
• Publisher: WizKids
• Platform: Board Game

One of the big Star Trek board games. This came with 24 miniatures, a ton of cards and is quite an in-depth game. There’s a focus on both exploration and combat, with the board starting out as completely hidden. It’s a 1v1 game (although you can play as 2v2).

Setup takes a bit of time, sorting out the map. You don’t get to choose your initial ships, instead you draw them at random until you have 10 points (or an agreed amount). Mission types are based on the ships drawn. You then pick four decks of cards to become your abilities for that game.

When you reach a new tile, there’s a random chance of an encounter, which you draw from the encounter deck. These will usually be challenges you have to face by the ship’s abilities – which can be altered by twisting the base – cards, and crew assigned to the ship. Checks involves adding these abilities and rolling the dice. While this is all a bit random it’s a lot of fun, but I feel it doesn’t suit the 1v1 nature of this game.

Combat also uses this system, pitting your ship’s weapons stat against the opponent’s shield stat (with dice rolls added). Destroying enemy ships nets you a victory point, but the opponent can draw a new ship and their fleet strength goes up as well. Your focus will be on completing missions instead, creating a lot of variety in how you play.

There’s a lot of good things about Fleet Captains, but for me the weakest aspect is the 1v1 or 2v2 nature of it mixed with the randomness. I personally think this would work better as a co-op game.

Star Trek: Expeditions

• Original Release: 2011
• Developer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: WizKids
• Platform: Board Game

I remember playing this a while ago (but unfortunately didn’t take any pictures of it), and the main reason I remember it was because it was so dull. It’s a co-op board game where you’re working together to fix three things on a planet: stop a civil war, stop the Klingons in orbit and convince the planet to join the Federation. Most turns involve flipping a random event, moving your characters and completing random missions by rolling a dice and adding the character’s bonus to it.

Everything about the game is just so dry: the board itself is boring, and the backs of the card are needlessly busy while dull at the same time, making the start of the game look like the mess. The flavour text on the cards is boring, or sometimes doesn’t exist – one of the random events is just “transporter’s don’t work this turn”.

This kind of game can be done well – there’s a brilliant Thunderbirds game that is similar but so much more fun.

Star Trek Deck Building Game: The Next Generation

• Original Release: 2011
• Developer: Alex Bykov
• Publisher: Bandai
• Platform: Board Game

Another board game I remember playing, that is also already in Tabletop Simulator. The only photo I originally took was of the “Phasers” card, some of you may spot why I found that particular card noticeable.

This is a deckbuilding game, not to be confused with Collectable/Trading Card Games where you build decks before the game, in this everyone starts with the same cards and purchases new cards from the middle of the table. You’ll draw 5 cards, use them in a turn, draw 5 more. When your deck runs out, you shuffle your discard pile to make a new deck. It’s a great mechanic used in a lot of games.

Most cards will give you XP which is sued to buy other cards. One thing that is more unique about this deck builder is that you have a flagship. Some of your cards will increase the ability of your flagship – with the goal of defeating ships from the space deck by battling them or via diplomacy (where you can use it as your new flagship). You can also battle other players, but I found it unrewarding and a pain.

It’s a really fun card game, and even has extra scenarios to play it in co-op against the Borg, or dealing with a Klingon Civil War.
[/QUOTE]

 

[jackoverfull]

Ah, yes, that was certainly a fan made unlicensed game.

 

[publiusr]

Always a big fan of miniatures
https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Star_Trek_Miniatures

Zocci had the best
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3667/star-fleet-battle-manual

 

[ichab]

Star Trek Online is a serviceable game now, but it was certainly not when it was first released.

The rushed nature of the game really showed. It had just two factions: Federation and Klingon with the federation being the only one that had a storyline of missions. Klingons had to make do with PVP to progress their character which gets old quick. Many of the federation missions were in such bad shape that they were eventually removed from the game entirely. The space combat was fine but the ground combat was god awful(lots of jerkiness and companions getting stuck) and the limited number of repeatable missions made the game grow old fast. The game was such a massive failure that it went from a sub game to a FTP game after it was given to Perfect World Entertainment. Now it's basically a PTW game because eventually the ships you get provided aren't strong enough and you need to swipe your card for T6 ships. The new content added has been decent and I've enjoyed it in spurts over the years. But this was a major missed opportunity.

 

[Cube1701]

Monopoly: Klingon Edition

• Original Release: 2011
• Developer: Hasbro
• Publisher: Hasbro
• Platform: Board Game

While this is still the exact same game as regular Monopoly, there’s a bit of effort put into the design of this. Every single part of the game has been translated into Klingon and the overall design is extremely nice – apart from the four corner tiles that Hasbro never like to change (although they still approved Klingon translations on them). Things have also been reworded to make it sound like a war game – money represents the size of your forces. It doesn’t make any difference to how the game works, but it does add a bit of charm to this version. It’s still an awful game.

• Star Trek Infinite Space
• Original Release: Cancelled 2011
• Developer: Gamefound
• Publisher: None
• Platform: Browser
• Not played: No playable builds available

Infinite Space was described as a casual browser-based MMO. While it was in development, the studio Gamefound were still looking for a publishing partner, but had to cancel the game when nobody was interested in it.

The game looked very combat heavy, although some footage showed the player character walking around the starbase. There was an ability bar at the bottom with lots of different powers.

Players would have been able to play as the Federation or Klingons, with pirates and Cardassians also acting as enemies. Federation ships included an Intrepid, Galaxy, Steamrunner and Norway.

Star Trek: Catan

• Original Release: 2012
• Developer: Klaus Teuber
• Publisher: Catan Studio
• Platform: Board Game

Catan is a game that is essentially decided by the initial placement of your settlements. Each round, you roll a dice and those tiles product resources to anyone with an settlement next to them. These can be traded with other players and used to build routes, more settlements and cities. It has an importance in board games as one of the games that made modern board games popular, but I really don’t like it at all.

The Star Trek version of Catan is the same game. The resources are not different planets, which don’t really do a good job at portraying what you get from them. The different resources are: Tritanium, Food, Oxygen, Dilithium and Water. Routes are depicted by ships, outpost and starbases represent settlements and cities. The klingon ship is the robber, which stops production on a tile and can be moved on a roll of 7.

The only difference in this version are “Support Cards”. These cards help with the actions in the game, and once you use one it can be swapped with another. It’s a very small change.

This version of Catan did get an expansion, called Federation Space, which provides two boards with maps to play on instead of the hexagon tiles. You also now play as different species, although all you have to represent this is a scoreboard with numbers in the design of that species. The ships are still Constitution class ships.

Apart from having some victory point markets on the board (the first person that reaches them collects it), it plays the same as regular Catan.

Star Trek Deck Building Game: The Original Series

• Original Release: 2012
• Developer: Alex Bykov
• Publisher: Bandai
• Platform: Board Game

This is essentially just a version of Star Trek Deck Building Game: The Next Generation with a theme of The Original Series. It’s a slightly simplified version, with the main difference being the lack of starships to fight – which also means you can’t upgrade your base ship.

Star Trek HeroClix: Tactics

• Original Release: 2012
• Developer: Seth Johnson
• Publisher: WizKids
• Platform: Board Game

HeroClix is a minauture combat system designed for superhero games. It was very well liked and went into many different properties.

When it moved onto Star Trek, it used ships as the models, but the gameplay was not changed to make it feel any different, it still felt like a superhero game.

Star Trek (2013)

• Original Release: 2013
• Developer: Digital Extremes
• Publisher: Namco Bandai
• Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Based on the Kelvin Timeline introduced in the 2009 “reboot” film, this is a new adventure starring the crew of the films, with the film’s actors providing voice work. The game is focused on co-op, letting you and a friend play as Kirk and Spock (although you can play singleplayer with the computer handling the other character).

The game is very clearly unfinished, it’s quite buggy with very wonky animations. Luckily, my latest playthrough I only encountered a couple of times where the glitches caused Spock to die, most of it was just odd visual bugs, such as within the first minute where Kirk span around in a circle and hovered up above the bridge.

Despite this clunkiness, I can’t bring myself to hate this game, I really enjoy it a lot. The dialogue between Kirk and Spock keep things moving and the game tries to keep itself fresh with different environments (they do a great job with the “giant industrial brewery” style of the Enterprise interior) and action pieces like skydiving. The combat is quite simple, but entertaining, with a focus on stealth and finding hidden tunnels and vents to sneak into positions to hack turrets.

The plot follows an attack on New Vulcan, where Gorn from another alternate universe have invaded to take a powerful device the Vulcans were working on. These Gorn are very different and you’ll encounter different types with strength and abilities to provide variety of enemies. The Gorn also have a virus that can turn your own crew against you, and the game heavily suggests stunning them instead of killing them – various sections have bonus objectives such as non-lethal or stealth to gain extra XP.

Shooting is a fairly generic cover shooter. I found myself using stun (which only makes enemies dizzy) then punching them to knock them out. There are various weapons to try, but the trusty phaser is usually enough. Some sections encourage stealth, but this is always optional. There are turrets, cameras and doors to hack using simple minigames, and is always risky trying in combat.

While this Star Trek game doesn’t really excel at any particular thing, it’s still a very enjoyable romp with a good story and fun action.

Star Trek: Rivals

• 
  
• Original Release: 2013
• Developer: Elephant Mouse
• Publisher: Elephant Mouse
• Platform: iOS
• Not Played: Servers offline, although I have played the game it is based on.

Star Trek Rivals is a simple card game using images from Star Trek 09. Each card has a number on each side. You and your opponent take turns placing one of your five cards in a 3×3 grin. The aim is to place the card down in a way so that the numbers on your card face a lower number on an opponent’s card, you get 1 point each time you do this.

The idea for this game wasn’t made for this, though. This is a rip-off of a minigame called Triple Triad that originated from Final Fantasy VIII (and has been in multiple games since), so I played one of those to give the game a go. It’s a simple game, but can be fun. Competing against someone who had paid for better cards probably isn’t fun, though.

 

[NCC-73515]

The best thing about the Kelvin game is that it let you explore a lot more of the Enterprise than we saw in the movies

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: The Next Generation – On Board the USS Enterprise

• Original Release: 2013
• Developer: Carlton Books
• Publisher: Carlton Books
• Platform: PC

This reference CD came with the book Star Trek: The Next Generation: On Board The Enterprise, written by Denise and Michael Okuda. It doesn’t mention who made the CD that came with it. The book mentions a “Breathtaking 3D Interactive Tour” which definitely oversells it. You may have noticed from the screenshot that the rooms you look at are computer generated renders. While these renders are extremely well detailed, you can’t explore them in 3D, you’re just looking at photos of the renders. Each room has a couple of 360 photos to scroll through and nothing to interact with, it’s a very limited tour.

Included in this is the Bridge, Captain’s Ready Room, the Transporter Room, Sick Bay, a corridor, Engineering and a cargo bay. With how detailed each location is, and how it was all created on a computer, it’s surprising that there are so few places to view from, as it’s much easier to create a new render with this than taking photos of the actual sets, as done in the Interactive Technical Manual.

Star Trek: Attack Wing

• Original Release: 2013
• Developer: Christopher Guild, Andrew Parks
• Publisher: WizKids
• Platform: Board Game

Star Trek: Attack Wing is the main miniature-based Star Trek game, and is sort of still going now, although mainly in the form of repackaged sets. From what I can tell, the last new ship was a Xindi-Reptillian ship in 2017, with the game also being used as a basis for a new co-op version called Star Trek Alliance.

Attack Wing does a good job at representing ship combat in Star Trek without being overly complex (although if you star incorporating many different sets, cards start overruling and contradicting each other). Each round, you both set your planned ship manoeuvre on a dial, then move on to using abilities and attacking. Not only is your ship important, but many special abilities and actions are provided by the crew you have.

There’s a lot of strategy in the game. One example is how you use shields. Some abilities require shield usage, so you have the ability to allow a shot to bypass your shield in order to protect your shield in order to use that ability. You’re also constantly moving and circling each other.

There are also a ton of missions you can get for the game, and some colossal Borg ships you can use (including one with pop out sphere). It’s a fun game and can be scaled and made more complex, or kept to a simple game with a couple of ships.

I also want to point out the superb Tabletop Simulator version, which spawn ships/cards based on fleets you design online, and also has a ton of features to help you out, such as control cards that make the ships move automatically.

Star Trek Trexels

• Original Release: 2013
• Developer: Xcube Games
• Publisher: YesGnome, LLC
• Platform: Android, iOS

This is a game that required server access to run: one of a few Star Trek games that are now unplayable due to this. I did play Trexels when it first came out, though, although I wasn’t very impressed.

After seeing Star Wars take on this formula with Tiny Death Star (which was actually good), this is Star Trek’s take on the pixelated room management game that was popular at the time. Unfortunately, greed took over on this and the game was excruciatingly slow unless you paid for premium currency. You could gain it from completing missions, but it was very slow.

The missions were extremely dull, too. Your crew generated energy cubes over time, so you had to wait for your energy to build up and press one of the two actions at the bottom of the screen. Rooms would increase this energy, as well as other resources needed. Building up a starship really could have been a lot of fun – especially as similar games have shown it can work – but Trexels missed the mark.

Star Trek: Alien Domain

• Original Release: 2015
• Developer: GameSamba
• Publisher: GameSamba
• Platform: Browser
• Not played: Servers shut down

Star Trek: Alien Domain was a browser-based MMO that had a focus on base building and resource management. It got an expansion/update in 2019 with Incursion before being shut down in 2022. Due to this, there is no way to play the game.

The game looks like a free to play game where it start off giving you lots of stuff, but then turns into a slow, hopeless grind unless you spend a ton of money to keep up with everything. The designs of everything look a bit off to me, but I can’t quite put my finger on why.

Star Trek: Wrath of Gems

• Original Release: 2015
• Developer: Genera
• Publisher: CBS Interactive
• Platform: Browser
• Not played: Servers shut down

After Trexels, Star Trek needed to jump straight on the next mobile gaming fad. Following on from the success of Candy Crush, Wrath of Gems is another Bejewelled clone that has some Star Trek flair stuck onto it.

You play by swapping the location of two gems in order to create matching groups of 3 or more. In basic Bejewelled gameplay, you’re doing this to get points, but Wrath of Gems adds a few spins on it. In ship combat, attack gems will let you shoot at your opponents with shields restoring health. You and your opponent take turns, so you have to be careful not to give your opponent a great move. Another type involves collecting combos of different types of gems, while another one is on ground missions where gems unlock your crew’s attacks.

There’s a TOS story and TNG story, and each settings has ships and crew to unlock and upgrade, using currency collected from various moves (or purchased). These can also be spent on lootboxes (which can also be purchased), giving you upgraded abilities.

The servers for this went down sometime in 2018 and as a result, it is not impossible to play the game, even if you have it installed.

Star Trek: Five-Year Mission

• Original Release: 2015
• Developer: David E. Whitcher
• Publisher: Mayfair Games
• Platform: Board Game

Star Trek: Five-Year Mission is a co-op dice game that uses mechanics from a simple dice game called “Roll for It” – which incidentally was a game I bought because of Wil Wheton’s TableTop show.

There are three decks of “alerts” in increasing difficulty, these have dice values and colours that need to be placed on it to complete. If you draw too many of these, you fail, and a new one is drawn at the start of each person’s turn – to make matters work, some may cause you to draw another of the next difficulty up, so you can end up with three new challenges at the start of your turn.

A turn sequence is simple: draw a new alert, collect dice (up to your maximum of 5), roll the new dice (plus any you want from last turn) and place them on the alerts to complete them.

Some of these alerts will grant you powers that can alter dice values or colours, but this dice manipulation is few and far between. With a bit more, there could have been some strategy to this, but most of the game you’re just rolling and placing dice without needing to plan or think. It’s a fun game, but a bit too simple at times.

One nice thing about the game is that you can play with either a TOS theme or TNG theme, or mix them together.

Star Trek Road Trip

• Original Release: 2015
• Developer: Tyler Brown, Mikel Fromstein
• Publisher: Aquarius
• Platform: Board Game
• Not played

Road Trip is a series of basic roll and move board games. You have to collect attack tokens in order to progress, with action and 50/50 cards giving you bonuses or making it worse for you. The goal is to get a toll pass to reach the centre of the board, fight the battled in the four corners then return back.

The Road Trip games are based on different franchises, all with the exact same board layout, rules and card results (just with different designs, names and flavour text). It sounds like a very generic and boring game.

 

[26138]

Oh man, Trexels brings back memories - I played it on a cross-country flight to pass the time. I had Doctor M'Benga as my CMO before SNW made him popular lol.

 

[Tuskin38]

A friend of mine wrote a story for a quest in Trexels as part of the compatition

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek Timelines

• Original Release: 2016
• Developer: Disruptor Beam/Tilting Point/Wicked Realm Games
• Publisher: Tilting Point
• Platform: Android, iOS, PC

For extremely long and grindy pay 2 win mobile games like this, I am playing until the inevitable brick wall. Most mobile games follow the same pattern: at the start, you’ll get lots of lootboxes thrown at you, you’ll get a bit of premium currency, and progression will be nice and swift to try and “hook” you. Then suddenly, progression stops. To get further, you’ll either need to grind for weeks, or pay money.

In Star Trek Timelines, there’s a random time anomaly messing with time to enable using characters and ships from all of the shows. It’s the go-to plot for Star Trek mobile games because it means more potential for selling stuff. Your mission is to fix the time anomalies, although with a game like this, there is never actually an “ending” as it means the game would be finished, so you know everything you do will fail.

I’ll start by talking about the good thing of Timelines. For starters, the graphics are really nice. Between missions, you get to see your ship in the planetary system the mission is set in, and they all look wonderful (if a bit busy). There’s nothing to actually do with this, it’s just a backdrop to look at, so it’s a bit frivolous and seems like a colossal waste of the nice assets.

Now I’ve finished talking about the good points, it’s on to the bad: this is barely a game. The main gameplay are away missions. Your crew have stats and you pick three for an away mission. You have “choices” in the mission but it just amounts to picking the person with the highest stat. You can’t use the same person on two actions in a row, so sometimes you have to pick the second best stat. That’s the total amount of thinking you use in the game. The writing is so dry and the use of just random versions of characters makes everything feel so unimportant that I found myself not having the energy to read most of the dialogue.

The game is all about collecting, and earning random things. Unless you spend a massive amount of time or money, you’re not going to be able to use the characters you like, it’s just whoever you happen to have. You need multiples of the same character to merge and you need to collect items (randomly) to improve their stats. I reached a point in mission 3 where I simply didn’t have the required stat. The way to continue is to play random old missions until you are randomly given something that will help. I managed to get 10 “premium” lootboxes which gave me a ton of characters…none of them useful. But don’t worry, you can buy specific crew at certain times by buying bundles that go up to £92!!!

I remember playing the beta of this and it had an in-depth combat system. It was a turn-based strategy that was a bit like rock-paper-scissors where your abilities worked against certain abilities, but made your ship vulnerable to others. This system was completely thrown out during the beta and replaced with one where you tap icons when they’ve finished charging. There’s so little thought involved that there’s an autoplay button along with an option to speed up the battles.

Timelines is definitely among the worst of all the Star Trek games. It’s devoid of anything interesting, there’s no gameplay and it’s just a chore repeatedly asking you to give it a ridiculous amount of money.

Star Trek: Ascendancy

• Original Release: 2016
• Developer: Aaron Dill, John Kovaleski, Sean Sweigart
• Publisher: Gale Force Nine
• Platform: Board Game

Star Trek Ascendancy is a game of exploration and conquest, although you can try to avoid the conquest if you want. Each player starts on their homeworld with a base that generates the three main resources (production, science and culture) as they explore the galaxy and eventually meet up, with the goal being destroying your rivals (which is not likely) or gaining 5 ascendancy tokens, which you get by generating and spending culture.

The exploration system in this is great: you roll a dice to determine how long the “space line” is then draw a new planet, which has an event. These discs can be moved around the connecting planet if needed (to account for table space and connecting to other planets), but are firmly locked in place one connected to a second planet. That said, it also has massive downsides as you can encounter threats and hazards. One player could get a bunch of safe systems ideal for colonising, while another player encounters pulsars and black holes which ruin ships and don’t provide any opportunity to expand or increase your production (although there are rule variants to help with this).

Another issue with the game is how long turns take. Sometimes I could have walked to the beach, had a stroll and still get back and have to wait a bit for my turn. I would have much preferred a system where you took turns doing single actions rather than conducting your entire turn in one go, or at least mechanics that allow for more reactions to what the current player is doing. The way Ascendancy works means games tend to drag on, while longer games like Twilight Imperium can keep you engaged the whole time.

While Ascendancy is fairly average for a 4X board game, the components and Star Trek them really improve it. Each faction has slightly different rules that reflect the species really well: the Federation can’t conquer neutral planets, for example, while the Cardassians need to have forces by a planet for them to produce anything and playing as the Ferengi does feel like you are merchants. It elevates the game from an average one to one that, despite its flaws, is still fun if everyone is into Star Trek.

Star Trek: Frontiers

• Original Release: 2015
• Developer: Vlaada Chvátil, Andrew Parks
• Publisher: WizKids
• Platform: Board Game

Star Trek: Frontiers is a Star Trek version of the popular board game Mage Knight. It focuses on exploration of the Gamma Quadrant (although you fight a lot of Romulans and Borg). It’s suitable for up to four players, who pick between Picard on the Enterprise D, Sisko on the Definat, Lursa and B’etor on a Bird of Prey and Markok on a Negh’var.

It can be played co-op or competitively (although you still have to complete objectives. The game is very in depth with a lot of complicated rules, which means a lot of checking to see how different abilities interact. That said, all parts of the game are engaging, even if it’s a lot to wrap your head around. There’s a big list of scenarios to choose from, and the good combat mechanics (while you explore, it’s very much combat focused) are well thought out.

Frontiers also got an expansion. In following on from the Enterprise D and Defiant, it added a new playable ship: The Enterprise A. Along with a new opponent: Khan, flying in his Dominion Warship. The designer was clearly a Wrath of Khan fan and went with that even though there was still plenty of TNG era ships, such as Voyager, or other races.

Star Trek: Panic

• Original Release: 2015
• Developer: Justin De Witt
• Publisher: Fireside Games
• Platform: Board Game

Star Trek Panic is a Star Trek version of a popular co-op tower defence board game called Castle Panic. In Castle Panic, you defend a castle while enemies stream from all around you, you have to use your cards to repair your castle walls and defeat the advancing enemies.

Star Trek Panic isn’t simply a retheme of Castle Panic, but brings about new mechanics that suit the theme perfectly. For starters, the Enterprise is not stationary, so you can spin the ship to face your powered shields towards the enemies. You can also move forward, which is simulated not by moving the Enterprise model, but by moving the enemy ships in front of the Enterprise closet (although ships behind the Enterprise don’t move further away). This is important for another main element: the missions.

Your objective isn’t just to withstand an attack, but to complete missions along the way. Each mission is only active for a number of turns and require spending cards to fix problems or moving the Enterprise into unknown ships to investigate. This creates the choice of using cards to defend the Enterprise or to finish the mission to get closer to winning the game. As enemies attack, they’ll first damage shields, then hurt the section of Enterprise relevant to that location: you have cardboard overlays to stick on top of the cardboard Enterprise to show off the damage, and it looks really nice.

Star Trek Panic is a really nice version of an already great board game, with the new additions fitting the Star Trek theme really well. Unfortunately, the physical game never got released in the UK.

Risk: Star Trek 50th Anniversary Edition

• Original Release: 2015
• Developer: The Op
• Publisher: The Op
• Platform: Board Game

Like Monopoly, Risk is another game that has many, many different licensed versions. However, Risk changes things more than Monopoly does, and the most basic licensed versions have a different map, while some versions have their own rules and can even be completely unique games with the Risk branding thrown on for sales.

Risk: Star Trek has two ways to play: One that’s just Risk and another which adds more to it. You play as different captains from the shows (Q has pitted them all against each other, and for some reason they’re going along with it and not working out a way to cooperate). In the enhanced version of the game, you have to complete missions such as “conquer locations controlled by 2 different opponents”, “control the United Federation of Planets” and “Use abilities of all your crew in one turn”. Due to the nature of these missions, the game length can vary a lot – it can either take forever, or it can be over in three turns.

The main gameplay is just like risk: sent troops to nearby locations, fight if there opponents or neutral aliens there. This is done by rolling dice, one for each ship attacking or defending (with a maximum of 3 dice for the attacker and 2 for the defender). You can move some of your ships at the end of your turn.

At the start of each turn, you have to turn over a Q card, which causes random events, these can help you out or make you lose things, some impact the whole board. The most significant one is the Tribbles, which have two starting cards. These work similar to Pandemic where they’ll grow in numbers before multiplying to other locations. There are only 50 tribbles included in the game, and if you place all of them on the board….everyone loses.

Risk: Star Trek is an interesting take on Risk, although one that’s extremely random.

Star Trek: The Dice Game

• Original Release: 2016
• Developer: Carl White
• Publisher: Self-Published
• Platform: Board Game

This is a fan-made board game, but has really nice assets and is the most popular fan made Star Trek board game, other than Klin Zha. It heavily borrows elements from a solo board game I enjoyed a lot called Deep Space D-6.

This is a solo board game where you have to use dice to get your ship though missions and dangers. Each turn, you’ll roll the dice – which represent crew divisions and assign them to tasks to manage your ship or contribute to completing missions. One of the dice is a “threat”, which get placed on the threat meter. One you have four on here, you’ll draw an extra event.

The events can damage your ship, put crew out of commission or will stop you form performing certain actions until you complete them by assigning dice to them. It’s a really fun game and the mission structure of it makes it different enough from the original game that it’s nice to play both. The developer did get approached by multiple publishers, who pitched the game to Paramount, but never got a response.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew

• Original Release: 2017
• Developer: Red Storm
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Platform: PS4, PC

Bridge Crew was originally released as a VR exclusive, before being patched to allow people to play it without VR. The ideal experience is to play this in VR with motion controllers with three other friends playing it in VR with motion controllers. I have played this with friends, but the VR is way beyond my budget.

The game itself borrows heavily from Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, a LAN game where you essentially create a starship in your house, with each person having a PC to represent their station (or the viewscreen for the captain). I’ve played it at a convention and it’s a great experience, and Bridge Crew is the closest thing that can be done online.

There are four stations in this game: Captain, Helm, Tactical and Engineering. Captain is the simplest role in multiplayer: you get told the orders to pass on to your crew, answer hails and push the red alert button. Most of this role is via the voice chat, giving commands to your crew (and hoping they pay attention).

Helm gets to fly the ship and set warp and “impulse” destinations (what the game calls in-system warp), and is probably the most involved position due to this.

Tactical gets to control the phaser and shield. There’s no phaser arcs or shield arcs, so unfortunately the combat is very basic. You can disrupt enemy weapons, shields or engines via hacking.

Engineering sets power levels and prioritises repairs, this is probably the worst role to have and you don’t even get a clear idea of what is happening due to not having access to sensor data like the other three roles.

In singleplayer, you play as the captain but can give orders to the crew. The AI is very basic and some actions can reset other orders. The helm officer won’t avoid obstacles, so for some situations, you can take over the station and control it directly (although you can’t give orders from there, you have to return to the Captain’s position). It’s not the ideal way to play, but it gets the job done and is far better than not having the option.

The main (and incredibly short) 6-mission story takes place on the USS Aegis, a ship from the Kelvin timeline. The bridge itself is wonderfully made and fits the aesthetic while adapting it to work for a game like this. The missions are fine, but after this all that’s left is random missions. There’s not a lot of content in this game.

The game does include additional ships you can use in the random missions: the prime timeline original TOS-style Enterprise and (as part of DLC) the Enterprise D. The TOS bridge absolutely looks the part and is very authentic, although you definitely need to use the help overlay to work out which buttons do what. It’s difficult to use, but it gets the feel of being in The Original Series really well.

The Enterprise D bridge takes a few more liberties in its interface, mainly making the LCARS displays more game-like to help it play a lot better. This also makes the engineer’s job (renamed as “operations”) better by improving the repair side of things by assigning damage teams.

Bridge Crew is a great start for a multiplayer Star Trek game, but would have been nice with more in depth gameplay for weapons and shields, as well as far more structured missions.

Star Trek: Discovery: Away Mission

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Sandbox VR
• Publisher: Sandbox VR
• Platform: VR Experience
• Not played: Cost of getting to location and playing too expensive.

Star Trek: Discovery: Away Mission is a full body VR room experience. This means you need to go to one of the company’s locations, gear up in their motion sensing outfits and get set up in their special rooms – sort of like an actual Holodeck. Six people can play the game, with you all in the same room – their location in the room corresponds with their location in the game, so you can move around them as needed.

The rooms also use fans and other features to enhance the experience – for example, the suit’s rumble packs combined with the fans in the room are used to create the sense of using the transporter. It sounds like a fascinating experience.

In Away Mission, you play as a member of Starfleet on board the USS Discovery, investigating a lost Starfleet ship. Tilly acts as your guide from the mission (from Discovery). The mission involves a lot of combat, but you also get points based on how well you use your tricorder.

 

[Tallguy]

It doesn’t mention who made the CD that came with it.

I think it was Tobias Richter, wasn't it?

 

[NCC-73515]

Star Trek: Discovery: Away Mission

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Sandbox VR
• Publisher: Sandbox VR
• Platform: VR Experience
• Not played: Cost of getting to location and playing too expensive.

One of them is in Cerritos!

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek Adversaries

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Puppet Master
• Publisher: Puppet Master
• Platform: PC, Android, iOS

Star Trek: Adversaries was a fast-paced card game that had a good response from critics. It was a digital collectable card game that featured some really nice starship models – and quite a lot of them. Unfortunately, the game was shut down and servers taken offline before it was even live for a full year. Booting up the game just gives you a login error.

However, this is a card game, and the information on the cards was kept on the Wiki for the game, so by figuring out the rules, creating needed tokens, I was able to recreate the game in Tabletop Simulator, just without the automation. It’s doesn’t have the fancy effects or the 3D models, but I can still try out the gameplay.

It’s a really fun game that reminds me a bit of Star Realms. Most of your cards are ships that can be enhanced by crew. You put them into play and can attack the opponents ship or their flagship – with the overall goal being destroying the flagship.

Each turn, the amount of energy you can spend on playing cards is increased every turn, leading to a game that starts out slow and speeds up massively. It also requires you to plan your deck with a balance of cheaper and more expensive cards. Leftover energy at the end of your turn becomes auxiliary energy, this can be spent on your flagships Special or Ulitimate powers, which also bring into play that flagsip’s unique cards.

The cards cover all the shows up to Discovery, with the cards looking nice and clean with lovely artwork on them. It covers a nice variety of ships, including a lot of alien ships in the neutral cards.

Adversaries is a fun, quick game. I probably would have hated the lootbox nature of the mobile game, but the actual card game has some fun and interesting mechanics.

Star Trek Trexels II: The Next Resolution

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Kongreagate
• Publisher: YesGnome, LLC
• Platform: Android, iOS
• Not played: Servers down.

Trexels 2 brings the first game and gives it the very marketable “throw in everything from all shows” thing that the mobile Star Trek games love because it’s great for lootbox opportunities. The ship building is more of the same: lots of tapping and wait timers, with the ability to pay real money to make the progression qicker.

The biggest change are the away missions, which look like they could be interesting as they’re an X-COM style turn based strategy….but from reviews, it’s very shallow and you’ll eventually encounter missions where you need to grind forever to upgrade characters enough to complete, or pay money to do so.

The servers for this game were shut down, so there’s no way to play it.

Star Trek: Fleet Command

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Digit Game Studios
• Publisher: Scopely
• Platform: Android, iOS

Playing this game now, it very much has a crisis of identity. The game boots up with USS Voyager artwork and you’re given some of the TNG crew at the start, but then the state of the universe makes no sense and the game doesn’t look right and feels more like the Kelvin universe.

And that’s because it IS the Kelvin universe. Originally, the game had no additions from other shows. The game was about you being an “independent” in the changed world of the Kelvin timeline, dealing with a mysterious AI helping you created by Scotty. The stuff thrown in by other shows have no explanations, they’re just there, and end up making the game look like a mess (just a more marketable mess). It started off as its own coherent universe before just throwing anything in.

Fleet Command is a “press button to do stuff” game. There’s no strategy and very little choice, combat is automatic and missions are extremely repetitive. It starts out promising, looking like a strategy game with in depth base building and complex technology trees, but this is all an illusion as it soon becomes clear that everything has to be done in a specific order. Want to upgrade your drydock for more ships? You need to make sure your Academy is at the right level, which requires Operations at a certain level and so on. The entire game is like this, making it feel like you’re just doing chores for someone else.

The game is all about time management. Everything takes time, and the main collectable are speed up items that skip some of these wait timers. If you run out, you can buy more. Other upgrades, such as new crew, are via lootboxes. The crew screen looks impressive, with a good 3D model of the character, but they’re nothing more than bonus stats for your ship. It’s really baffling when part of the game is looking for Scotty when he’s sitting on on of your ships (the Kelvin universe version, too). Having these known characters detracts from the game, but it appeases those that just want to spend money to collect.

But all these increased stats, upgrades and new ships doesn’t help the gameplay of just choosing locations and going there. This is by far the most boring game I’ve ever played, and the only positive I can come up with are that the graphics are nice, especially the ship models. But even then, you can only get a good look at these in the menu as ships are a tiny dot when playing. These are nice enough that they could be ported to other games, with some nice alien ships, the USS Discovery, and the Titan-A.

You do get one reward for sticking with the game: at a certain milestone, your ship and station is marked for permanent PvP. This means that you’re now at the mercy of those who have played the game for longer and those that have paid money to upgrade their stuff. It’s very much a Pay 2 Win game so this is something that, if you can last through the boredom to reach it, will likely make many people stop playing.

This game is probably the most boring game I’ve ever experienced.

Stage 9

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Messy Desk
• Publisher: Messy Desk
• Platform: PC

Stage 9 was a very ambitious fan project: recreate the Enterprise D in its entirety to explore at your own leisure. The project was shut down by CBS before it was completed, so we only have a selection of areas to explore – although most major areas are covered, including some never seen in the show.

As this is a very early build, the optimisation isn’t great, so it will be sluggish on decent PCs. As it’s just exploring, it’s not an issue. NPCs look a bit freaky, but you can turn them off.

The Enterprise D interiors have been recreated in astounding detail, areas we never got to see – such as the stairs to the Observation lounge – are now something we can look at and inspect. Some consoles also have functionality, you can take control of the ship, play with cargo bay tractor beams and open shuttlebay doors.

Speaking of shuttlebays, the most impressive location in this is the Enterprise D’s main shuttlebay, which we never got to see in the show. It’s absolutely colossal, like a full size airport, and you can see why they never had the budget to create a set for it (and CGI was too early when the show was on the air). It really helps to sell the scale of the ship.

Another treat is the holodeck, which has more bridges to explore. There’s the bridge of the Enterprise form The Original Series along with different variants of the Enterprise D bridge from: the Encounter at Farpoint, Yesterday’s Enterprise, All Good Things and Generations, giving you a nice idea of how much they were changed for these episodes.

It is easy to get lost, though, and it seems obvious that a map would have been implemented later in development. You can find some neat extras such as a phaser range and a shuttle you can pilot.

It’s a massive shame that this project was shut down. The developers behind this made an officially approved interactive experience for The Orville where you get to explore the whole ship, and some of them are working on The Roddenberry Archive.

Star Trek: Galactic Enterprises

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Christophe Boelinger
• Publisher: WizKids
• Platform: Board game

A trading game where your goal is to make the most latinum. You all play as Ferengi as you bid on types of goods and try to sell them at the highest price. This isn’t a new game, though, it’s based on an older trading game called Fantasy Business.

Each round, one good is drawn for each player, plus one actions card. One of a time, players bid on these until each player has one card, or there are no cards left due to players passing. One glaring omission in the goods is that there are no self-sealing stembolts.

After this, each player writes down the price they want to sell at. The minimum price this could be is the base price, while the maximum is double the base price. Players can talk amongst themselves and come to agreements – however, they don’t have to honour those agreements when writing them down.

Once players have chosen their price, you go through each good. Anyone that set the highest price gets nothing, while everyone else gets their chosen price. The person that chose the lowest price also gets a bonus of 2 per card they own. If all players set the same, it counts as the lowest price and everyone gets the bonus.

After this, the goods are kept (they represent an ongoing supply) and you bid on new cards to add to your supply.

Your enjoyment of this game will depend entirely on how into negotiating everyone playing is, and how much they’re willing to screw each other over. Even then, there’s too much risk to setting the maximum price unless two people make a specific agreement, so most people just pick the maximum if they’re the only one with a good, then set the minimum if another person has it.

The original game has the same issues and nothing was every done to fix it in this version.

A Ferengi trading game sounds like a good idea. And while the cards and latinum look nice, this game just feels like accounting.

Star Trek Fluxx

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Looney Labs
• Publisher: Looney Labs
• Platform: Board game

The Fluxx games all play the same way, with just some minor differences. It’s a game of silly randomness and changing rules, and can be fun every now and then. I’ve owned a couple of version in the past, including Star Fluxx, which parodies multiple sci-fi shows and films. The game starts with you drawing one card and playing one card, but some cards change how much you draw and play in a turn.

Keeper cards are placed in front of you, these are usually characters of object. Goal cards will tell you which Keeper cards will win in game, but only one Goal is in play at once (although rules can change that). However, be wary about Creeper cards: these will join your Keepers when you draw them and you can’t win the game when you have one (unless that creeper is a specific goal). Action cards will also force swapping cards, let you draw and play more while surprise cards can stop actions or let you do something in their place.

The Star Trek version of Fluxx is based on The Original Series. One thing that this has that isn’t a standard part of “Fluxx” is the “Ungoal” card. If this comes out and every player has had the “Doomsday Machine” creeper and the Enterprise is not in play, everyone loses.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Fluxx

• Original Release: 2018
• Developer: Looney Labs
• Publisher: Looney Labs
• Platform: Board game

A version of Star Trek Fluxx for The Next Generation. This one is very similar, with another Ungoal card (this time with the Borg).

Alongside this was also the Bridge expansion, which adds new cards and goals for combining this with Star Trek Fluxx.

 

[Tuskin38]

Adversaries also gave us our first good look at several Discovery Season 1 ships before even STO had them.

 

[David cgc]

You do get one reward for sticking with the game: at a certain milestone, your ship and station is marked for permanent PvP. This means that you’re now at the mercy of those who have played the game for longer and those that have paid money to upgrade their stuff. It’s very much a Pay 2 Win game so this is something that, if you can last through the boredom to reach it, will likely make many people stop playing.

As I mentioned on Tumblr, I am really salty about that. The snooty message I got after someone griefed me by destroying all of my stuff while I wasn't looking at my phone was more than enough motivation to delete the game immediately.

I wonder if it's still there, I should memorialize it for posterity. Ooh, now the loading screen is Lower Decks themed, I didn't hear about that, and YouTube ads are usually so aggressive about making sure I know what's going on with Fleet Command. Nope, message is long gone, oh, well.

 

[NCC-73515]

The Enterprise D interiors have been recreated in astounding detail, areas we never got to see – such as the stairs to the Observation lounge – are now something we can look at and inspect. Some consoles also have functionality, you can take control of the ship, play with cargo bay tractor beams and open shuttlebay doors.
(...)
It is easy to get lost, though, and it seems obvious that a map would have been implemented later in development. You can find some neat extras such as a phaser range and a shuttle you can pilot.

You can fly into a drydock, to a relay station, to the Ent-B, and to DS9, and then take a shuttlepod, type 6, or even a runabout out and fly around to take a closer look. Even the inside of DS9 is kinda visible through the windows, and the Defiant is stationed there too for you to fly around. You can also walk out of the shuttlebays and take a stroll on the hull of the D to recreate that scene with the 2 Qs standing on the pylon. Various objects can be picked up and used, like phasers and tricorders, and even Picard's flute in his quarters.