Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown (PC) (Demo)

Developer:

GameXcite

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Release Date:

2025

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Systems:

PC, PS5, Series X|S

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown! Okay, to be accurate I'm writing about the demo, but I only play games for an hour or two anyway so this is basically business as usual. It's just going to be a little more... unfinished than usual.

Oh, before I start, here's an interesting fact: I promised I was going to write about WarCraft and then disappeared for six months. Then I wrote about this instead of WarCraft. What happened was I got completely focused on writing about Doctor Who over on Sci-Fi Adventures and then afterwards I found it really hard to get back to any of the work-in-progress I'd put on hold for so long.

So I'm writing about something brand new instead. In fact this demo is only days old, part of the latest Next Fest on Steam.

The developer's pretty new as well, as gameXcite released their first game, Asterix & Friends: Remastered, in 2021. They followed it up with Idle Asterix on Android in 2022, and then Asterix & Obelix: Heroes in 2023. That's not a track record that fills me with confidence, but it got them a shot at the Star Trek licence and now they get to show off what they can do with it.

They've already got me sold on the premise: revisiting Voyager episodes and choosing a different outcome. I rewatched Voyager recently and I thought that it was just as entertaining as Star Trek: The Next Generation... as long as you know in advance that it's going to waste its potential and hit the reset button on any storyline that's going somewhere interesting. It seems like Across the Unknown is going to confiscate the reset button and I'm interesting in seeing how that even works.

SPOILERS I'm going to show off all the demo including the consequences of the big choice at the end. This is also going to spoil the first episode of the Star Trek: Voyager series. There'll still be 167 episodes that don't get spoiled though.

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I'm getting a bit of an 'indie' vibe from this, or at least 'AA', so my first risky decision will be to put all the settings on 'Epic' and hope it's not a stuttering mess. Not that there are many settings to change, it's not exactly taking advantage of the latest DLSS features (or if it is, it's keeping quiet about it).

I like how the changes take effect immediately, so I can see what each option actually does. That's nothing wild for 2025, but it's appreciated. 

The game starts by saying "You are the Captain of the Federation Starship U.S.S. Voyager," so I wondered for a moment if I was going to get to make my own character. Nope, you play as Captain Kathryn Janeway herself.

Man, look at this bloody model, I have learned to not expect perfection when it comes to video game reinterpretations of movie and TV show designs. I'll give them points if they can at least manage to keep things consistent from game to game. But this... this is U.S.S Voyager. They've taken it out of an episode and put it on my screen. Whoever made this, they know what they are doing.

You don't have to take my word for it, here's the same shot from the episode Caretaker, which kicks the series off.

Star Trek: Voyager

I know it's hard to see details when the footage has been run through mid '90s video editing processes, it's got a bit of NTSC rainbow shimmer to it, but these two ships look the same to me!

Actually wait, the name's a bit too small and it's too far down. Other than that, it looks awesome. Great job gameXcite, you deserve a maximum thumbs-up for this.

I'd compare the game's version of the opening credits sequence to the TV series, but it doesn't have one. A few shots look similar though. They do enough in this cutscene to properly show off one of (in my opinion) the prettiest and best designed spaceships in sci-fi history.

Janeway's got a new crew on a new ship and they're getting ready for a new mission: locating a Maquis vessel that has disappeared in the Badlands. Don't know what the Maquis or the Badlands are? That's fine, the series barely explained it either! All we get is that they're terrorists and they may have dangerous new technology. Not sure I remember that line from the series.

The game is actually being pretty faithful to the episode so far, except it's missing all the scenes set in... places.

There's no scene of Chakotay and his Maquis crew on their ship, no scene of Janeway meeting Paris in his cushy penal settlement, and we don't even get Kim and Quark on Deep Space 9! Or any Deep Space 9 at all!

This is important as it means it's missing all the events that lead to Kim and Paris meeting and becoming friends. In the game they meet for the first time on Voyager's bridge, and Kim is surprised to learn that Paris is an ex-con who joined the Maquis and got caught.

We do get a bridge set at least, though seems a little undermanned. Maybe it's because the camera's so far back. Hang on, who's that at the helm? That's not Stadi, it's some Paris clone! Well, he'll be dead in two minutes so it's not important.

The design of the bridge looks pretty faithful to me, though I'm not really getting to see it from many angles. Captain Janeway's pretty good too, though she looks a bit like a Thunderbirds marionette when she moves.

Hang on, I just noticed that something's wrong...

Star Trek: Voyager

Janeway doesn't have her iconic season 1 bun! They need to reshoot this intro and fix her hair. And maybe turn the lighting up a bit.

It is nice seeing all the familiar faces though.

There were a lot of Star Trek games in the '90s that were able to advertise that they had the whole cast involved and doing voices, going as far back as Star Trek: 25th Anniversary CD-ROM release in 1994. 

Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force (PC)

I remember that Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force was able to get all the actors to do voices except for Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, and her dialogue was later added in a patch. 

Here in Across the Unknown they've got absolutely none of the original actors doing voices. There are absolutely no voices at all in fact! It gives it an indie game vibe and honestly, I don't mind. Voice acting is expensive and only gets pricier and more impractical the more dynamic a story gets.

Okay it would've been nice to hear the occasional voiced line, just to establish what the characters sound like.

Voyager enters the Badlands: a treacherous region of space where violent plasma storms can cripple even the most advanced stations, apparently. Janeway's not concerned though; she observes the swirling chaos and smiles. We don't get to actually see a smile, but I can picture it. Janeway loves to fly her ship into incredibly dangerous places, like space storms, and regular storms.

This particular storm doesn't quite look as impressive as it did in the TV series, but that's fine as they're not here very long. Their search for the Maquis ship is interrupted by an mysterious displacement wave that hits them like a space truck and sends them to another world. Well, 75,000 light years north. Same thing.

Well the bad news is that the ship has been smashed up pretty good, a bunch of the crew are dead, and they don't know what happened or where they are. There's not really any good news.

I like these illustrations they've got in place of flashy rendered cutscenes. I don't know how many of them I can reasonably expect to see, but I hope they keep them coming,

This is the bit in the episode where Janeway races down to Main Engineering to keep the warp core from exploding. It's less dramatic here, as it just wants me to click on Stellar Cartography to get the sensors back online.

There's a shot that doesn't look so great in my website's format, though you can click the image to view it full-size. Actually you're not missing much, as almost all the rooms are wrecked.

If the game eventually gives me the choice to send the ship back home the same way it got here and skip the entire voyage, then I'm going to have to remember this and decide if it's worth the price. I mean, if the ship had 150 crew members to begin with and loses 33% of them each time they travel this way, then they'd only get 66 people home.

Seeing the ship in side view with all the rooms in 3D reminds me of XCOM, or maybe Fallout Shelter. I like all the turbolifts whizzing around.

Screenshot from the 3D tour in the The Roddenberry Archive

The side view cutaway is meant to look like the Master Systems Display behind Janeway's head at the back of the bridge. They've even recreated all the LCARS interface stuff.

It's nice to be able to zoom in to the rooms on the diagram and see them in 3D. Well, it will be once I get more of them rebuilt at least. What I've got looks very faithful to the sets in the series and they all seem to fit exactly as they should, which I guess shows how well designed the ship was.

Though they have taken some liberties though. The major landmarks (bridge, engineering, shuttlebay, deflector dish etc.) are supposed to be on the ship's centre line, so they're fine. But Star Trek's known for its big curvy corridors, so anything important on those hallways is going to have been relocated to fit on the ant farm version of the ship.

Now the tutorial's brought me to the system map where I have to scan planets for deuterium to get the ship's fuel tanks filled up. The ship has a matter/anti-matter reactor, so you might think that it's anti-matter they should be looking for, but maybe they've got plenty of that! Plus they can probably make it out of deuterium once they got it.

Anyway, the important thing is that the sensors are now online, which means I can now do some scanning. I've had some bad experiences with scanning in the past (I'm looking at you, Mass Effect 2), but here it's absolutely painless. Pick a point of interest, hold down the mouse button for a second or two, the scanning is now complete.

The first thing I scanned turned out to contain duranium (metal) instead of deuterium (fuel), so that's not going to get the warp drive humming. But the next question mark was the winner.

What we've found here is a spaceship, a Talaxian Baxial Freighter to be specific, so they'll probably be using the fuel. But maybe we can make a deal for some of it. Wait, I recognise that freighter... that's Neelix's ship! He's Voyager's cook, or he will be at least.

It's only 3 cycles away (whatever they are), so I'll set a course and go meet Neelix.

Oh no. I've been interrupted by a choice!

I feel like I should recognise this ship and know who they are, but I don't. To be fair, the VFX team did a lot of recycling in the series, so it could belong to a bunch of different aliens. Or maybe they created it for this game.

It seems like I missed the part where I get told what their problem is, but I'll assume that these are both valid solutions. The second option has the word 'risk' in it, so it seems riskier, but I need to build an Engineering Office before I can even attempt it, so I'll go with option one.

I got 365 deuterium as a reward, enough to sort out the warp core and skip visiting Neelix's ship entirely in this version of the story. Sorry Neelix! Wait, hang on, this was the visit to the Talaxian freighter? Okay now I'm confused.

I've never seen the sets from side view before, but Main Engineering looks basically perfect to me. Maybe the warp core is a bit chunkier here, I dunno.

Alright, how to I switch this reactor from 'grey mode' to 'on'? Oh, I just click the bottom segment.

Now that the reactor's running I'm burning through my 365 units of fuel at a rate of 20 deuterium per cycle. It'll take me 3 cycles just to fly back again, 60 fuel, so I'm going to need more very soon.

Okay now that the lights are on, the characters can start to investigate the mysterious Array that dragged them here. Turns out that there is actually some good news: the Array brought the Maquis ship here too so they don't have to hunt them down any more!

Now I have another chance to do something, as it's asking me to choose between scanning for life signs [Sensor Array Chance: 100%] or hailing them [Optional]. Well, I never got a 100% chance of succeeding at anything while playing XCOM, so let's see what that's like.

Oh, the ship's empty. The Array has people on it through and we can go over there and see for themselves as soon as we get the Transporter Room repaired.

To repair the Transporter Room we need to fly away again and find a place with some duranium, like this abandoned mining station that I already discovered earlier.

Once again I have a choice and it's being very clear about much I stand to gain if I succeed. Except I still need to build that Engineering Office to unlock the second choice, so really there's no choice here at all. I'll search for anything valuable without entering the station. It's fine, the station will still be there when I'm ready to try option 2!

Actually no, once a resource has been visited and a choice has been made, it disappears forever! You get one shot at this.

Now the tutorial has brought me here to click 'repair' and spend 14 duranium to fix the Transporter Room. I'm sure it'll be my job to switch to different screens later on, but it's holding my hand for now.

The funny thing is, in the TV series the Transporter Room wasn't damaged and they didn't even need to beam over, because they all got kidnapped like the Maquis crew and experimented on. It was the '90s, alien abduction dramas were big.

Once I got the place fixed I was asked to pick the ideal away team to take over to the Array, based on their own skills and unique traits. Like in Star Trek: TNG - A Final Unity, kind of! But Paris and Kim are my only options so I'm going with them.

They've beamed into the middle of a cornfield, which isn't what you typically find on space arrays, so I'm back to choosing how to investigate.

This time each choice requires a certain level of a certain skill to have a chance to succeed. Paris has 25 of whatever the Starfleet emblem icon means, and option 1 wants 29, so he's 4 short. Kim has 29 of the science skill, but I need 33 for option 2, so he's 4 short as well. So either choice is as good as the other.

But I can see a list of all four challenges I'll be facing down the left side of the screen and I'm thinking the person I use here may lose points, or skip a turn, or something, so I should pick the character now who will be less useful on the next choice.

I was right! When I use a character they get fatigued and become less effective during the next challenge.

After making a choice it puts a bar on screen that fills in green depending on how many skill points my character had. So if the challenge needed 100 and my character had 50, then it fills up halfway. Then a white marker starts sliding back and forth, and if it lands on the green then I win.

Though I came into this round with so much engineering skill that it's overflowed and coloured some of the bar yellow. If I land on that, then I get a bonus.

The back wall of a barn dissolves to show a bluish-glowing room where unconscious people, including a tattooed man and a half-Klingon woman, lie on surgical tables. Well we found the Maquis crew!

In the episode Voyager's crew is immediately put on tables themselves, but here I'm either waking up Chakotay or Torres, those are the two possible outcomes. I decided to wake up Torres, because she spends most of Caretaker trapped on an alien planet with Kim and I felt like changing that.

With the away mission over, the two characters get experience points for their performance, so now they're both level 2. Though my choice had an unexpected side-effect. Waking up Torres was Kim's choice, so they're both sent back to their ships while Paris is kidnapped in their place! 

Episode  |   Game   

This also means that it's Torres instead of Chakotay who is invited over to Voyager from the Maquis vessel.

Fortunately Tuvok is still part of the Maquis team that beams over, so Janeway got her undercover agent back! This means I've lost Paris, but I've gained Tuvok and an angry Torres.

Tuvok's first job is to get down to Engineering and find a way to bypass whatever's jamming their communications with the Array. I also need to repair life support on deck 5 to gain access to that floor for future expansion... and to repair that Engineering Office. I'm going to get on with that right away.

Though I'm also going to fly the camera around the ship and look in to all the rooms I already have working.

Hey look what I've found!

After what I've seen so far in the game I'm not surprised at all to see a beautifully-modelled Aeroshuttle down here, entirely accurate to the concept art and VFX test footage. There's a bit of clipping going on in the ceiling (pre-release demo - does not represent final quality), but it's nice to see the place fully staffed and ready to launch at a moment's notice!

The developers could've just left this part of the ship as a grey box seeing as the Aeroshuttle was never actually used in any of the seven seasons, despite being clearly visible on the bottom of the hull:

Star Trek: Voyager

But instead they went the extra mile and put in something that Voyager's hardcore fans would love to see. And maybe I'll actually get to launch the thing at some point, who knows?

They even modelled the captain's private dining room (which immediately gets replaced by Neelix's kitchen in the show).

There it is, under the bridge, behind the mess hall replicators.

I've got the mess hall operational now, but the best it can serve right now is replicator rations. That's still +10 to morale, which is a real help, though it's not enough to get the crew's morale going up instead of down every cycle. If it gets too low there'll be a mutiny and then I'll have to execute the ringleaders or something! 

Okay, the Array's jamming signal has been neutralised, so we should be able to establish communication.

Well at least we know that Paris and Chakotay aren't on the Array any more, though the Caretaker there is less than keen on telling us where he's put them.

I've got the option to let Torres talk here, which I wouldn't have had if I'd saved Chakotay instead. So there's some reactivity for you. Negotiation is more of a Starfleet skill though, which Torres admits, so I think it's best if Janeway continues doing the talking.

Janeway gets the Caretaker to reveal that he must honour a debt that can never be repaid, but that's about it. Tuvok has observed that the Array has been sending energy pulses to a planet in another star system, so that's another clue. Janeway's keen to get over there, but I've still got planets here to check!

Alright, the only thing I can do about the crew's deteriorating morale right now is dig out some more ruined rooms on the newly activated deck 5 and make some emergency quarters in their place.

Clearing blocks requires time and an engineering team, and when it's done I get a bit of duranium back. This leaves me with the empty space to build rooms, which also requires time and an engineering team. I can build rooms from five different categories: Maintenance, Crew, Technology, Combat.. and Borg Technology. Uh, Janeway, why are you suddenly thinking about installing Borg tech on your ship?

Right now I'm filling the space I dig out with emergency quarters (to improve morale) and cargo bays (to store more resources). Though this is going to take a few cycles to finish, so I should get back to flying around the star system.

The game was very insistent that I warp over to the next star system (the button kept flashing and bleeping, so here I am. Now I have a whole bunch more planets to scan and harvest, via the most efficient route I can plan.

Strange Adventures in Infinite Space (PC)

The game reminds me of the Strange Adventures in Infinite Space games, where you choose planets to visit and end up encountering all kinds of procedurally generated roguelike weirdness, except here it's mostly just deuterium and duranium. 

And I always have a choice to either take the base amount or gamble for better rewards (at the risk of getting less, or even getting people injured).

Oh an optional challenge just appeared!

Though we can't be that desperate if I have 25 cycles left before I run out of time to find the fuel. In fact I completed the task almost immediately. The trouble I've got right now is that my cargo bays are so small that I keep hitting the limit and throwing resources away even when I don't gamble for extra. It's a real waste! I really need those new cargo bays to finish construction.

The flying around bit is also continually interrupted with news about what projects have been completed, like rubble being cleaned up or new rooms being built, so I can redeploy my engineering team elsewhere.

Okay, I've gotten everything I can, so I'm heading to the plot destination, where the Caretaker was sending the energy pulses. It's some dead desert planet called Ocampa.

Another Talaxian freighter arrived and the occupant offered his services as a guide, so I've gotten another new crew member! 

This isn't like Fallout Shelter where you have to drag workers into rooms, but with Neelix on the crew I can assign him to the Mess Hall to improve efficiency. Then I can zoom in and watch him work. The 'assign a character' list only shows people with the necessary skills for that room, so I can can't assign Neelix to Sickbay, but I can assign him to Main Engineering. And he can still be on away teams at the same time!

My new objective is to "Rebuild Voyager and explore the system, or skip CYCLES until Neelix is ready to talk." I've already explored everything though! And I'm basically done with fixing up the two floors I'm allowed to work on. I don't have the tritanium required to repair the life support to open up a new deck.

I guess I'll just keep skipping cycles then.

Alright we're beaming down to the planet to see if we can find our missing crew, with Neelix as our local guide. I wasn't sold on Paris' resemblance to the actor earlier, but Neelix looks so spot on that it's creepy.

I got to choose the other two heroes to go with him. Fortunately the game's nice enough to show me all the challenges I'll be facing on the left, so I was able to pick people who possessed the appropriate icons. I need someone with a gun, someone with a shield and someone with... diplomacy maybe? I wasn't able to light up that middle trait though, so I'll have to make do with just a Talaxian and an Innovator.

I feel like it's probably a good idea to pick a variety of crew members for away missions instead of bringing out your favourites each time, as that way they'll all get levelled up. So level 2 Kim can stay put this time. Sorry Harry, I know Paris is your best friend but... oh wait, they've barely met in this timeline.

Hang on, that's not the away team I picked! I didn't choose to bring Paris down! It's doubly confusing, as he's one of the characters I came here to save.

I wonder how people can breathe when the whole planet's dead and there are no plants. I suppose there's not a whole lot that's alive here to use up the oxygen. Anyway, we need to go visit the small settlement of Kazon-Ogla, apparently.

There was a bit of a sandstorm along the way, but Torres sorted out a wind-resistant shelter, grumbling the whole time about the incompetence of the Starfleet team she's with (so just Tuvok then, seeing as Neelix isn't Starfleet).

The rest of the mission went about as badly as it did in the episode. I let Neelix introduce us to their leader, Jabin, seeing as he already knows the Kazon-Ogla. A couple of minutes later he's got a gun pointed at him! Turns out that Neelix had a secret agenda and was actually here to rescue his Ocampan girlfriend Kes. At least we were able to get away without casualties, which wasn't a sure thing as some of my choices came with a risk. 

At least we're making progress, as Kes knows about the underground Ocampan city. She used to live there, but she found her people's dependency on the Caretaker to be unbearable and found a way to get out.

She can't get us in there herself as the city's protected by a security barrier, but that's fine as I've got a Science Laboratory repaired and powered up! I just need to click 'Transporter Signal Amplifier', wait 3 cycles, and we've got a way past the barrier. Plus I can assign a hero to make it go faster, someone sciency like Kim. Though not Janeway; she's unavailable due to being the captain.

I need to get a Hydroponics Bay built too, so I have somewhere to put Kes. Also it'll give people a break from replicator rations and improve morale. First though I'll need to research it.

The tech tree doesn't look especially interesting, but there are a lot of things to research and five pages of them. You can research Engineering, Crew, Science, Combat and... Borg. Really, the Borg tech again? We've been in the Delta Quadrant for five minutes (65 cycles) and already Janeway's considering the benefits of having a crew of cyborg zombies.

I researched a signal amplifier to get us through the Ocampan shield and then started the Engineering team fixing up a workshop to manufacture it. I'm going to imagine that when the room's done it'll just be an empty space with a big replicator on one wall. Unfortunately I've already been everywhere in the system and gotten all the resources so all I can do is skip cycles until it's complete.

FIVE CYCLES LATER

Alright, the gadget has been built so now we're on an expedition to the Ocampan city to save Paris and Chakotay.

You can combine characters' talents to boost the score and make it more likely to get a good outcome. In this case I've boosted it so high I've got 100% chance of getting a critical success. Those +18 science points will be mine.

The problem with doing this is that every character who joins in with a task will be fatigued during the next challenge, lowering their score. So it's best to alternate them. Though I actually failed the very first challenge on this away mission even though I'd picked the right guy and he was well rested, as luck just wasn't on my side.

Fortunately it tells you the level of risk for each choice and the choice I picked there had none, so I didn't actually face any consequences for failing.

The team recovered Paris and Chakotay, and after a cutscene on the bridge it finally occurred to the crew to get them to sickbay! In the episode it just cuts straight there as Torres and Kim are being cured of whatever the Caretaker did to them. In fact I don't think the episode ever mentions why they were sick or how the Doctor cured them, but the game actually throws in some extra lines to explain it.

Basically it.. hang on, where did those people in blue uniforms come from? Their emergency holographic doctor's not supposed to have a medical staff, that's why they leave him running so much. Also, where's the biobed? There should be a circular room with a bed where that back wall is. Maybe that's a later room upgrade.

Anyway, what's happening here is the same as in the episode: the Caretaker is dragging ships in from across the galaxy to find someone genetically compatible with him. He wants to create an offspring who can sit on the Array and look after the Ocampans after he dies, and he doesn't have long left. That's why he's been so reckless and frantic.

Now that the Starfleet and Maquis crews both have their people back and we know what the Caretaker is up to, it's time to warp back to the first star system and pay the Array another visit.

Unfortunately the Kazon-Ogla had the same idea and they've got ships at the Array. Jabin realises that Voyager has formidable firepower (I repaired the weapons and shields while I was waiting), but he's not going to let us claim the facility.

Just like we've been scavenging for resources, the Kazon want the Ocampans' water, and if they get control of the Array they can do that. So this is only going to get resolved in space combat.

I love the way the ship looks in this game. It looks a bit plasticy, like the miniature, without an overly dark metallic hull.

Anyway I'm in a space battle! And there's music for a change! The interface reminds me of a bunch of classic Star Trek games, with Voyager's status in the top left showing its shields on four sides, and the Kazon ship on the top right.

I don't have direct control though; the ship fights semi-autonomously and I'm just I'm telling the crew what I want to happen. In this case I want them to take offensive actions and target the Kazon carrier's shields. 

Star Trek: Voyager

This all happened in the TV series too, so despite my choices the game hasn't strayed too far from the plot. Though I've read that later sectors will have enemy ships roaming around, so combat isn't just tied to the story.

If they can use phasers to get the shields on one side to drop, then I'll be able to start cutting loose with the torpedoes. Which I actually do have direct control of, weirdly. I get to press the torpedo button when I'm facing the right direction and watch them fly. No one ever said anything about not being able to replicate new ones, so I'm not holding back.

Man, this is nostalgic. It really is like those classic games, except that I'm not really doing anything.

Actually that's not true, as I'm sometimes activating my crew's abilities when the cooldowns are done. I got to choose three characters, and I decided Tuvok (tactical officer), Chakotay (Maquis captain) and Paris (ace pilot) would be the most useful in a fight. Though I could've gone with Kim and used his science move, or I guess Neelix could throw cheese at them?

I won the fight and got a cutscene with the Maquis ship ramming into the carrier, for some reason. Fortunately all the crew has beamed over to Voyager so they're alive. But Jabin's called for reinforcements, as he's really determined to have the Array. Whatever we decide to do next, we don't have much time.

Alright I've reached the big choice of episode 1: do I destroy the Array to protect the Ocampa from the Kazon and leave Voyager stranded in the Delta Quadrant, or do I use its systems to send us back home the same way we got here?

It's not really a choice at all though, as there's no way I'm not going to see what happens if I use the Array to skip the entire series! That's half the selling point of the game.

Janeway justified her choice to abandon the Ocampa as following the Prime Directive, but Chakotay is not happy about it. He speaks up in defence of the Ocampa and gives me a chance to change my mind! In fact, I'm down to a 60% chance of success now, for some reason. Maybe if I fail then Tuvok decides that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, I dunno.

But I won the dice roll and used the Array to get the crew home! Even better, the ship wasn't left as a wreck this time and no one died! That I'm aware of.

Chatokay's kind of pissed, accusing Janeway of leaving the Ocampa at the mercy of a powerful enemy who likes to prey on the weak, just like the Cardassians. I get where he's coming from, though there's just one thing I'm not clear on... what are Cardassians?

Okay, to be fair it's possible the game has actually mentioned them and explained what the Maquis were up to, and I just didn't notice because I already know the backstory.

But the game's not over yet, as I still have some choices left to make! That's unexpected, but cool.

In fact, I think these are probably the most interesting choices so far, because I'm outside of the episode now and in uncharted territory. And because it's something I actually have to think about.

My job was to arrest the Maquis, seeing as they're terrorists and all, so if I believe that my mission was just then I have to carry out my duty. Even if we hung out together for a while and had a fun space adventure.

How would I even explain to Starfleet that I let them go? "Oops, I left the keys to the Aeroshuttle in the ignition!" I'd pretty much be throwing my career away. Either that or getting the whole crew involved in a cover up.

Damn Kim, I didn't expect you to jump to their defence. Not now when you barely know them at least. Can you imagine Chekov standing up for Harry Mudd? Uh, I suppose that would depend on whether you know who Harry Mudd is.

C'mon man, they're going to a cushy Federation penal colony. Chakotay will probably be busted down to Lieutenant and back on a starship in a few years.

It's interesting that these are my own two dialogue choices. I can either tell him it's the Janeway or the highway, or I can say that personal bonds must be ignored! Well, honestly, I believe when you're in this job at this position you've got to put duty over friendship. Or quit Starfleet.

I mean sure you can bend the rules to save your first officer from dying of pon farr or whatever, but I think they should probably put friendship aside when dealing with the terrorists they were sent to catch.

On the other hand, I told Paris he shouldn't worry and hinted that he'd have a position at the helm soon. Like I said, a few years in prison and then back on a starship.

And now that the mutiny has been quelled it's time to go home and have some coffee.

The last screen in the demo basically says "If you want to see the exciting adventures you chose to skip entirely, wishlist the full game!" Sadly I think the 'Voyager just goes home' timeline is over though. I can't play a game that's just The Next Generation with a different cast.

CONCLUSION

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Star Trek: Voyager was a great example of a series that had no interest in fulfilling its potential. Its sister show Deep Space Nine had consequences and experimented with serialised storytelling, while Voyager was all about hitting the reset button and playing it safe. So it's perfect for a game all about 'what if' scenarios really.

This is a pre-release demo and not representative of the game's final quality but I think it's fair to say that it shows that the developers are taking it seriously. There are some changes to the story even before you start making choices, you can't recreate a faithful Caretaker adventure, but the dialogue feels faithful to the characters even when it's not following the script. Plus it doesn't just do a fantastic job of reproducing what we saw in the series, it also reproduces things we didn't get to see, like the Aeroshuttle. Voyager looks and moves just like she did in the '90s TV series... well, except for in combat, where she sometimes jerks around a bit like in the '90s video games.

It doesn't look like a AAA game, it was clearly made on a budget, but for this kind of game that's normal. When you spend a lot of your time looking at a cutaway of the ship or flying around a star system then there's no reason it has to look like a new Mass Effect game. The painted scenes do a decent job of showing what's happening, at least when they put the correct characters in them.

The big exception is the scenes on the weirdly underlit bridge, which are always shot from the front and look really dull. And there are a lot of scenes on the bridge. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity (MS-DOS)

I'm not expecting expensive motion captured animation or a camera that pulls barrel-rolls like in Star Trek: Discovery, but a few stock dramatic angles and maybe some expressive portraits next to the message boxes would go a long way to making it feel more like Voyager.

A little voiced dialogue would help too, though just a little. The screen at the start says it'll get a partial voice over, but that's all it needs really. In fact, a game with a branching story like this should have too much dialogue for it all to get voiced, or else there's not enough branching! I just need a line or two to remind me what the characters sound like and make it sound less dead.

The music they've promised would really help there too. It doesn't even necessarily need to be from the series, as Voyager was from the 'sonic wallpaper' era of Star Trek where the music was just there in the background trying not to be noticed, but if they could licence the theme that would be good.

Plus it doesn't seem like it'll have scenes where the characters just hang out as people, which is maybe an issue when one of the selling points is how your choices can change the outcomes of episodes and leave you with different characters. They get to show a bit of personality as they're dealing with crises, but if the only glimpses of character interaction come from plot scenes on the bridge then the consequences of going full Parallels and radically changing events is basically that someone else is reading Harry Kim's lines when you're doing the scanning. Oh plus Torres got to do a bit of grumbling on the away mission. There are definitely changes.

Overall this seems like it's going to be a choose your own adventure story fused with something like Fallout Shelter or XCOM's base building, and a 'fly around space checking out planets for treasure' game like Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. I like the structure, as you set things building or researching, then go do a bit of exploration to push time forward and get the resources. Once enough stuff is done you get the next part of the story.

However, arriving at two procedurally generated star systems where every planet has either a chance to get more metal or a chance to get more fuel didn't really show off how interesting exploration could turn out to be. There were no proper random events, no special loot, just Caretaker plot or 'the derelict ship's hold is fused, do we take the stuff lying outside or blow it up to get at the metal/fuel?' dilemmas that could give me +14 more resources if I won the dice roll. So there's a question mark over how that will turn out.

But the 'build a spaceship and do adventures' part has my interest and if they can continue to improve the rest of it, maybe turn up the lighting on the bridge, then the other parts could interest me too. It might even interest people who have never seen Voyager. I think it mostly avoids the tie-in problem of relying on knowledge from watching the show, but then I've seen the show so it's hard for me to know.

I'd say that it's good enough for me to recommend that you check it out for yourself, if it seems like something you'd be into. The demo was still available on Steam last time I checked, and that's all you can play right now as the game isn't done yet.

You can also read my review of the episode Caretaker over on Sci-Fi Adventures by interacting with THIS BUTTON. It's nothing new, I wrote about it ages ago, but I just thought I'd mention it.

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Okay, I don't want to promise anything, because it didn't work out so great last time, but my bet would be on WarCraft being the next game. I'm also fairly confident you won't have to wait another six months for it this time, but predicting the future is notoriously difficult, so who knows?

Anyway, those were just my opinions on Across the Unknown (demo). If you've got your own opinions you can write them here too, in that message box underneath. Criticising Star Trek is basically what the internet was invented for.