There are plans for bolder Star Trek video games
“We wanted to do something that's more interesting and engaging and will get people's attention.”
I am not telling you news when I tell you than an executive at a major entertainment conglomerate has looked at a popular franchise and decided that they can—they should—do more with it in video games.
But Shawn Kittelsen, a longtime games writer and designer who is now head of creative and production at Paramount Games Group, makes a decent case when it comes to Star Trek.
Many recent Star Trek games have been niche, he recently told me: a lot of 4x strategy games (like this one), a lot of PC-first games. There was a VR game that Kittelsen really liked, 2009’s Star Trek Bridge Crew, but it too was on the fringes.
“There haven’t been a lot of bigger console releases, especially in recent generations, for Trek,” Kittelsen said.
But, as a job such as his dictates, he’s now pondering a world if there were.
First up will be Star Trek Shadow Frontier, announced this weekend, from horror game specialists Bloober Team (Silent Hill 2 remake, Cronos the New Dawn).
It’s slated for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series and is pitched as a haunting action-adventure featuring Ro Laren, a cult-favorite character who has dipped in and out of Star Trek TV since 1991’s Star Trek The Next Generation episode “Ensign Ro.”
In the game, she’s crash-landed on a mysterious planet, which, well, here’s the marketing copy:
The planet is a spaceship graveyard where nothing is as it seems. As she explores the planet’s corrupted surface and crosses paths with other survivors, she must face twisted creatures, a hostile ecosystem, and an entity that seeks to envelop her body and mind.
Kittelsen says players should expect a game that’s less grim-dark horror, a la a Dead Space or a Resident Evil set in Star Trek, and is more of psychological thriller, akin to Ninja Theory’s Hellblade games.
“There’s plenty of Star Trek episodes in which a character really goes deep into a conflict within themselves,” Kittelsen said, promising a Bloober take on that. The game is “an opportunity to go deep with this one character and to make a character study—which I think gives us a chance to explore aspects of the lore that haven’t been as developed in games before.”
Kittelsen believes there’s a lot of commercial promise around combining psychological thriller, survival horror and action adventure, moreso than “if we made it another 4X strategy game, for example.” Not to beat up on that other genre, he said. “I love 4X strategy, but I think you can overserve that.”
Another way Kittelsen put it to me is that Star Trek Shadow Frontier is meant to show an unusual side of Star Trek, a different side than the standard Trek that’s been showing up in games for a while.
“This is, I think ,an exploratory opportunity for Trek fans to see what we can do with a game that doesn’t try to be the, let’s say, the right down the middle version of Star Trek.
“We wanted to do something that’s more interesting and engaging and will get people’s attention.”
Bloober Team began developing Shadow Frontier before last year’s formation of the new Paramount Games Group. It’s now a central project to that amplified push for games. Kittelsen regards Trek as one of Paramount’s “big four” franchises to build up in games. It’s Star Trek, along with Avatar the Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spongebob Square Pants.
New game focus, not revivals
Earlier this spring, one of the more unusual Trek games in recent memory, the story-driven Star Trek Resurgence, was pulled from digital storefronts following the expiration of publisher Bruner House to sell the game. It’d only been released in 2023.
Given Paramount’s priorities, I was curious if Kittelsen’s team had plans to bring the game back.
“No plans to re-list Star Trek: Resurgence at this time,” he told me. “Kevin Bruner and the team at Bruner House put a lot of love into the title, but it struggled to find an audience. I’ll never say never to bringing a game back if there’s enough demand, but right now we’re focused on new Star Trek titles.”
I’ll have more Summer Game Fest coverage in upcoming editions of Game File. And, if you missed it, earlier today I had a piece on the return of Xbox exclusives.