It looks like Star Trek video games might be having a bit of a renaissance. As soon as I finished a video about how there's been a dearth of Star Trek games in the past decade or so, multiple studios announced new Star Trek games.
As I was finishing up the editing of that video series, both Star Trek: Voyager: Across the Unknown and Star Trek: Infection were announced. And now, not even a year later, 2 new Star Trek games have been announced: Shadow Frontier and Outposts Unknown.
I had just made a video about the lack of Star Trek games...
I had specifically talked in my video about how there haven't really been any true Star Trek-themed RPGs. Yeah, sure, there had been the point-and-clicks, which fill a similar niche. Across the Unknown might be the closest to an RPG so far, with quests and characters who gain experience and level up skills. But more strange is that 2 of my favorite game genres are horror and city-building. 2 of these new games are horror games (one of which is in VR!), and the other is a city-builder. Well, more technically, it's a "colony-builder"
This isn't to say that there haven't been any Star Trek games at all. It's just that most of the Star Trek video games in recent memory have been mobile games or console versions of mobile games. This includes the likes of Legends and Fleet Command. Arguably, Voyager: Across the Unknown also fits this description.
Outposts Unknown demo has tutorial and pacing issues
There is a playable demo for Outposts Unknown, as of the time of this writing, and I did spend a couple nights playing it.
Despite this game being a sort of a dream project for me, I have to admit that I was sadly underwhelmed with the demo. It's tutorialization of mechanics was lackluster, and it suffered from some pretty egregious pacing issues. Specifically, metal harvesting and transport seemed to be way too slow. I felt like I spent more than half of my playtime simply staring at the screen, waiting for metal to be delivered to the currently-prioritized building so that it can be constructed.
To make matters worse, the game has a day/night cycle, and every night, all the workers on the colony get in a shuttle and return to the ship. During the night, there are no automated machines that continue to harvest materials, move resources, or construct buildings while the workers are back on the ship, and so this entire night cycle is spent just staring at the screen while absolutely nothing happens, waiting for the shuttle to come back in the morning. This is an absolutely baffling design decision! Why would Starfleet send a starship crew to build and operate a new outpost, instead of sending actual permanent colonists who would work and live at the outpost? As far as I could tell in the demo, the game doesn't even include the ability to build any housing structures on the planet, which suggests that permanent colonists will never show up.
Most of my time in the Outposts Unknown demo was spent waiting for metals to be collected.
I did like how the game puts a heavy priority on exploring the map and solving little problems or mysteries. It also uses specialized characters whose department and rank gives them boosts to working specific buildings or jobs. This adds some extra optimization strategy, and some tough decisions regarding whether to add a new engineer that you might want for optimizing a processing building, or take a supply drop of a desperately-needed resource.
This is just a demo, and the game doesn't have any formal release date yet (other than "2026"). So there could be months before release, during which time, the developers could potentially tweak the balance of the logistics system to improve the pacing of the early game. But the fact that the outposts are apparently entirely manned by starship crew who retire back to the ship every night, seems to be a fundamental design element that is unlikely to change. This, unfortunately, has the potential to derail the game. But I guess we'll have to wait until it's final release to find out...
Also dipping a toe into horror
The other announced games do not have playable demos, and I have not played either yet. Infection has been available for purchase for a while now, but I have not bought or played Infection yet. I've been waiting to see if it gets announced for PSVR2. I do have the PC adapter for my PSVR2 headset. In lieu of any announcements or news regarding a native PSVR2 port, I am thinking that I might buy Infection on Steam and use it as a test of the PC adapter.
The combination of Infection and Shadow Frontier both being horror games means that I will probably create a sixth episode of my Star Trek video game retrospective on YouTube that will discuss these 2 new horror games. I might also try tracking down a playable version of Hidden Evil, since that game looks similar to classic Resident Evil in terms of mechanics and presentation, which might make it the closest thing Star Trek has had to a horror game in the past.
Infection and Shadow Frontier are both psychological horror games, a completely new genre for Star Trek games.
The fact that Shadow Frontier is also being developed by Bloober, hot off the heels of its mostly well-received remake of Silent Hill 2, is interesting. This means that Bloober has recently handled 2 of my favorite media IPs. It will be interesting to see if Bloober continues to elevate its products, or if they revert back to old bad habits regarding their presentations of mental illness and victimization. Considering that Silent Hill 2 turned out better than expected, I am cautiously optimistic.
Now if only someone would announce a spiritual successor the Birth of the Federation and Starfleet Command, then this Star Trek video game renaissance will be complete!