Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown: Charting the Course Home
After being announced in August, a surprise demo for Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown dropped on Steam this week, giving fans their first chance to take command of the U.S.S. Voyager and begin the long journey home from the Delta Quadrant. Developed by Gamexcite, this procedurally generated story-driven survival strategy game puts you in the captain’s chair right from the start of Voyager’s arrival in the Delta Quadrant. For the demo, we were tasked with managing the pivotal events of the series premiere, “Caretaker.” After spending some time with the hour-long demo, it’s clear that while the journey ahead has some turbulence worth noting, the core experience of commanding Voyager offers a deep and rewarding sense of ownership.
Visually, the game is a tale of two realities. Voyager herself is the star of the show, as she is featured gracefully on screen when we booted up the game. The model is impressively detailed and lovingly rendered, a faithful recreation that fans will adore. Delving into the ship’s decks via a cutaway view is a genuine treat. Across the Unknown’s core gameplay loop involves repairing damaged systems, clearing debris, managing various rooms and decks, and exploring the quadrant in which Voyager finds herself. This process of bringing the ship back to life piece by piece feels both satisfying and strategic, giving a tangible sense of progress and control.
However, when you see your crew, the illusion wavers. Character models are lifeless, resembling mannequins more than the iconic characters we know. The game features no voice acting, which is off-putting at first, and all story and decisions are conveyed through text. This isn’t necessarily a negative; it positions Across the Unknown as a perfect “podcast game” – a chill, relaxing experience where you can follow the story and make command decisions without needing to be fully immersed in voiced dialogue or a dynamic soundscape.
When not advancing the main story, we were tasked with flying Voyager around three star systems to gather necessary resources. Each system presented a handful of objectives, such as scanning planets or investigating anomalies. While essential for repairs and progress, we found these events became noticeably repetitive even within the short demo. Hopefully, the full game will feature a much broader variety of objectives to keep the 70,000-light-year journey home feeling fresh and engaging.
Unfortunately, what is unforgivable is the complete absence of Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic Voyager theme music. Its omission is immediately noticeable and sticks out like a sore thumb, robbing key moments – like of first seeing Voyager – of their potential emotional weight. No offense to the composer of the game’s original music – it’s kind of like what you might hear in a classic Star Trek show, but we have to wonder why create a Voyager game without that show’s killer theme music? As it stands, you might want to pull up the show’s soundtrack on Spotify while playing this game.
The demo’s performance is a concern. On a high-end gaming desktop running at Epic settings, the framerate in the ship’s cutaway view frequently dipped below 40fps, indicating a need for further optimization. We also tested the game on a Steam Deck OLED, where it ran passably on Low settings, though it still struggled to maintain a steady 30fps in the same cutaway view – but yet could jump to 72fps as Voyager explores various star systems. For players on all screens, the addition of a text size toggle would be a welcome quality-of-life improvement, as some of the text can be difficult to read, especially on smaller screens. These performance hiccups, alongside small issues like typos and minor continuity errors (such as Neelix appearing before his official first contact), reaffirm the disclaimer seen at the top of the screen that asserts the demo is still a work in progress.
Beyond the bridge, your command extends to managing away teams for planetary excursions. In the demo’s case, we were responsible for choosing which characters complete certain key moments of this episode’s story. These missions add a welcome layer of roleplaying, requiring you to carefully select crew members whose skills match the challenges ahead. Sending the right team can lead to success and valuable resources, while a poor choice can result in failure, putting your crew and ship at risk. This system reinforces the weight of your decisions and adds another engaging dimension to the strategic management of your crew.
Despite these rough edges, the strongest feeling the demo imparts is a profound sense of ownership over Voyager‘s journey. You are not just watching the events of “Caretaker” unfold; you are helping shape them. Customizing the ship (which, to be fair, is largely structured in the demo since this is the tutorial), managing its operations, and making choices that differ from the show’s canon creates a unique and personal narrative. For what it’s worth, at the end of the demo we were faced with destroying the Caretaker Array, or sending Voyager home. We tried the latter option, but apparently our 60 percent success chance wasn’t high enough, which meant Janeway was forced to destroy the array.
This feeling of ownership will likely only deepen once players move beyond the tutorial episode and begin charting their own unpredictable course through the Delta Quadrant. If the developers can polish the performance and perhaps secure the rights to that legendary theme song, Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown has the potential to be the deep, engaging command experience fans have been waiting for, and it’s definitely worth wish-listing on Steam. It currently does not have a release date, and is coming to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
Some stray thoughts about this demo:
- When playing on PC, we were happy to see we could switch on the fly between keyboard/mouse and controller. This is a nice quality-of-life feature for players who prefer one control scheme over the other, or switch between devices.
- A quality-of-life feature we would love to see added is if the keyboard’s number keys corresponded to dialogue choices. As it is, players have to use the mouse to select their preferred dialogue choice.
- It would be nice if the graphics menu were accessible during the game itself, instead of being only available at the main menu.
- Across the Unknown is generally compatible with ultrawide monitors, except when you are faced with decisions on the bridge. There are black bars on the side of the screen where the 16:9 aspect ratio stops, but yet the dialogue choices are all the way in the lower-right-hand corner. Hopefully, the game will remedy this issue when it is released.
- Check out this list of crew members who were sharing crew quarters at one point in our demo: Jarek T’Lan, Trina K’Vek, Tavor S’Nor, Thonin T’Lor, Ayala Tos, Rilka T’Vek, Vorin H’Kor, Rylan K’Nor, Vosin K’Tor, and Hannah Moore. Perhaps names are procedurally generated and that system wasn’t working correctly for this demo?
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