Offworld settlement builders delight in forcing their pebble-gathering, ore-hoarding colonists into a life of subsistence scrounging by way of disaster: a crashed spaceship or cryogenic malfunction leaving them no choice but to eke out an existence on a hostile rock. Star Trek: Outposts Unknown, announced yesterday and already bearing a demo, is different. Your team of explorers aren’t trapped; in fact, if they’re anything like mine, they’ll be knocking off and back on the mothership by dinnertime.
This is indeed a more cheerful, less threatening flavour of colony sim, to the extent that (and in keeping with Trek’s noninterventionist politics) you aren't even running a colony. Starfleet have struck a deal with a recently first-contacted exocivilisation to help them out with a system-spanning radiation storm problem; your settlement is a mutually agreed-upon research station, with all the perks of sanctioned mission support. That means an Enterprise-like ship in orbit, with soft beds, hot food, and a med bay for crewmates to retreat to at night, as well as occasional resupplies of resources and new staff.
It’s not entirely without danger – my ground team were quickly attacked by whipping, warp-touched vines, and buildings (or people) left outside protective barriers will take damage from periodic radiation flare-ups. Morale, rest, hunger etc. are all tracked for each recruit too, so presumably it’s possible for one of those gauges to run empty. As a starting point, though, this is one of the most relaxed introductions to a resource-managing builder I’ve played yet. Within twenty minutes I had a shuttle landing platform up and running, ferrying crewmates back to the ship at sundown – presumably for a warm bath and some holodeck yoga – before depositing them back for the morning shift.
As a determined 5pm finisher in real life, I should be supportive of my expedition’s creature comforts and work/life balance. Unfortunately, this is not real life. It is a sci-fi settlement builder, and if I know anything from other sci-fi settlement builders, it’s that nothing gets done if I can’t enforce backbreaking labour on sleepless underlings. At least thrice during my time with the demo did I quietly mouth "Where are you going?!" as my security offices and metal processors were left unfinished, workshy redshirts downing tools and heading back ship-side for their nightly banquets and cold plunges.
To apply some cold Vulcan logic, the ship being a separate, functional space does at least add a small additional layer of strategising. Its food stories will run out without replenishing, and overeager recruiting could leave some poor, bunkless sods sleeping in the dirt. And strategic layers are something Outposts Unknown will want to keep hold of – even when my crew were earning their keep, it felt a little too easy to end up sitting idle myself, watching and waiting for a supply chain to do its thing before I could progress.
Hopefully that’s just early tutorial pains, though, and/or my own inability to play these kinds of games without devolving into incompetent tyranny. You can try the demo for yourself on Steam; it should also help kill time until we see or hear more of the other Star Trek game to come out of Not E3 2026, Bloober Team’s "psychological thriller" Star Trek: Shadow Frontier.