Star Trek: Outposts Unknown: the first colony game set in the Star Trek universe

Star Trek has had shooters, space combat games, a massive online game, adventure games and even a bridge simulator.

It has never had a colony game. This is the first.

Out on 20 October. No score today.

What you build

Complex research facilities across strange new worlds, in the X'Lehari system.

You explore tech trees and building trees, and carefully choose which structures will help you explore and build, while facing a mysterious cosmic force that threatens all life in the system.

And you lead your crew through dangerous encounters that will test their morale and their prowess. You assign tasks, you develop your officers, and you work to ensure their survival.

Why this genre suits this licence

Because Star Trek is not a war series, it is a series about exploration missions.

The original formula runs in three acts: you arrive somewhere, you do not understand what is happening, and the crew argues about the right way to respond. Combat is the exception, not the rule.

An outpost-building game placing crew morale and officer development at its centre fits that far better than a game about shooting Klingons.

And the chosen setup is right: a system to explore, worlds to study, a threat you do not yet understand, and a crew to look after while you investigate.

That is an episode of Star Trek turned into a gameplay loop, and it strikes me as a much better idea than one more ship simulator.

The officers, and the point that decides everything

Magic Fuel Games insists on two things: crew morale, and the individual development of officers.

That is where the game can become something, or remain a resource manager dressed in Starfleet uniforms.

If the officers are characters, with opinions, specialities, disagreements about the decisions you take, then you get what the licence has promised for sixty years: a team that argues.

If the officers are units with a morale bar to keep green, you get a decent colony game with red and blue uniforms.

That difference does not show on a store page. It shows at hour three.

What else I am watching

The cosmic threat. A mysterious force threatening the whole system is a good tension engine, provided it acts. In a lot of colony games, the announced threat amounts to a clock counting down. In a Star Trek game, you hope it will be something to understand instead.

The balance between exploring and building. The studio says you have to choose which structures help you explore. That is the right tension: every building is a trade-off between consolidating what you have and going to look further.

And respect for the canon. This is an officially licensed game, in an original system. Fans of this series are among the most attentive there are, and they will notice every technical detail that does not hold.

What I already like is the choice of niche.

It would have been easier, and probably more profitable, to make an action game in this universe. Making an outpost-building game means aiming at a smaller and more demanding audience, the one that reads tech trees and wants to know what its science officer thinks of the decision just taken.

That is precisely the Star Trek audience, and it is funny that it took sixty years for somebody to notice.

We will come back with a score once players have spent twenty hours or so in the X'Lehari system.

Had a favourite Star Trek game? The list is long and uneven, we are debating it on the InsertCoins Discord.