Explore and expand to strange new worlds in this upcoming 4X strategy game

Previewer’s Log: Stardate 2023.09.07: It has been a long time since the Star Trek series has offered fans an opportunity to command fleets of ships and stretch their diplomatic and military minds, but thanks to the upcoming Star Trek Infinite from Nimble Giant Entertainment that wait is almost over. Recently, I had the chance to spend some time with an early build of the game, and I came away impressed with its potential but there are still some kinks in its warp core that need to be worked out.

Star Trek Infinite is a 4X style strategy game that will see you exploring the Alpha and Delta Quadrants of the Star Trek (non-JJverse) universe. For those unfamiliar with the genre, the 4X subgenre refers to goals you will be working towards in the game, explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. In this case, your responsibilities extend beyond just managing a fleet of ships and sending them out to explore or conquer strange new worlds.

You’ll also be in charge of directing scientists to develop new technologies, guiding politicians to expand your influence and enact laws across your controlled star systems, and interacting with the races you encounter—whether through diplomacy or force. For those who have played games like Stellaris, Stardock’s ‘Sins of a Solar Empire’, ‘Galactic Civilization’ series, or ‘Sid Meier’s Civilization’, the mechanics and gameplay of ‘Infinite’ will feel familiar.

In the build I played, I had the choice between playing as the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and the Cardassians, each faction specializing in different types of playstyles. Klingons, for example, are very good in combat while Romulans utilize their spy ships and shadowy tactics to pull ahead. I opted to spend most of my time with the Federation because I love ship designs and I’m a sucker for the Sovereign class Enterprise-E.

From a gameplay perspective, Star Trek Infinite checks all the boxes for a 4X game. It has a wealth of options to tailor your playstyle how you want, large areas to expand out to, managing outposts, and the list goes on. One particular feature I thought was interesting and unique were the missions that each of the factions have.

These missions, upon meeting specific criteria like exploring a set number of new systems or amassing a certain quantity of a resource, provide bonuses, units, or schematics. For instance, aligning with the Federation will add its flagship, the Enterprise, along with its legendary crew to your fleet. Reaching the goals of another mission may permit you to begin manufacturing Deep Space Nine’s small-but-mighty Defiant. The mission trees progress in a normal structured manner, unlocking further missions as you complete preceding ones. This not only offers more goals to strive for but also infuses the game with additional ‘Trek-flavor’ and easter eggs, complemented by their associated boons and benefits.

Star Trek Infinite includes a system known as the “Ship Designer” which allows you to make custom builds for the various included classes of vessels. As you progress through your research, you will unlock new modules that can improve various stats when equipped to a design. It reminded me a lot of playing an RPG where you are gearing out your characters with fresh new equipment, to help fill gaps in your team. Make a tanky Bird of Pray or an especially deadly Galaxy class, reminiscent of the Enterprise seen in the episode “All Good Things”. The fact that you could save these designs so that you can quickly mass produce your custom build going forward was a nice touch.

These adjustments are stat based only though and have no effect on the visual appearance of the ships you are customizing, which is a bit of a bummer. Hopefully down the road, perhaps some DLC or through mods, further customization will be added to let you cosmetically build and alter ships outright, similar to the ship builders in Sins of a Solar Empire or Galactic Civilization.

Bugs and hiccups are to be expected when testing out an in-development build of any game, and while I’m confident many of the issues I experienced will be ironed out (my invisible Enterprise as an example), there are a few aspects of Infinite that give me greater pause. The biggest issue is the INCREDIBLY tiny user interface that impacts every aspect of play, making everything from menus to text very difficult to read and see. Even in the early trailers, this issue was raised. To Nimble Giant’s credit, they included a scaling option in this build. Though it’s in an experimental phase, it made my gameplay experience more challenging than necessary.

With 4X games, there is so much information you need to know, dialing in the scale to make that information readable was a battle of trial and error. Either the text was still too small, or the windows would be too large, with entire portions of a menu being off screen. Without the ability to move the individual windows, that meant that the information was simply inaccessible. Eventually, I was able to find a scaling option that sort of worked, but a solution to the scalability of the UI is a must before launch.

An item that was oddly absent was the menu to show the Physics, Society, or Engineering research options. Normally in 4X games, you will have access to a tech tree that will show what pathway you need to take in order to research your desired piece of technology, helping you to route out your decisions. The Mission Tree is an example of this, that I touched on earlier, with these research paths tending to be far more intricate. Having these maps allow players to efficiently assign your workers to best reach that desired outcome. However, no matter how much I searched, I came up empty, even resorting to asking friends who were also participating in this preview. All of them also came up with nothing.

The prospect that Star Trek Infinite is lacking in a set research track is concerning, and will make planning ahead and aiming for your desired build far more difficult. This worry is only exacerbated by text in the research window stating “Whenever we are finished researching a Technology, up to 3 new options will be generated”. Please, please don’t have these research options be randomly generated, I beg you Nimble Giant.

The last item that I hope gets adjusted before lunch is Infinite’s tutorial. These style of strategy games can be incredibly intimidating for those not accustomed to their complexities, with all of the menus and mechanics that you need to juggle. The current tutorial includes pop up text windows briefly explaining items and asking you to perform a specific action, but I never felt like they went far enough to adequately explain things. Star Trek is such an important and well known property, I think a lot of people will be drawn to Infinite who are interested in Star Trek and less familiar with the 4X genre so having a good tutorial will be important to have.

Some of my issues with the tutorial would be helped by addressing the UI scale that I mentioned previously but I would like to see a more hand-holding or separated approach, splitting it up into different topics. Darken the screen and highlight what you want the player to click on, add a little narrative that the player is a student in Starfleet and going through a course for some flair and help make it more interesting. Having it voiced would also be a welcome addition.

Any gripes or criticisms aside of the current build, it is undeniable that Star Trek Infinite is being built as a labor of love by fans that respect the property. The team at Nimble Giant Entertainment has done a commendable job designing previously unseen ships and technology. Their creations, like the Romulan starbases, seamlessly fit into this universe and feel authentic. The team even worked in partnership with Paramount to achieve these results, and it shows. For those who opt for the Deluxe version, you’ll have access to music from the shows to accompany your gameplay. Visually, Infinite checks all the boxes, all the characters, iconography, and aesthetics you would expect from this era of Trek are here and proudly on display. The ships and other models all look wonderful too. Simply put, Star Trek Infinite is a very nice game to look at.

There is a lot of potential with Star Trek Infinite and as long as they can stick the landing, addressing those concerns and the bugs that were present in this build, then I think they will have a real winner on their hands. Hopefully it won’t be long until players can beam up and set course for strange new worlds of their own.

Star Trek Infinite is planned for release on PC through Steam on the 12th October.

Most Anticipated Moment: Sending out a fleet of customized sovereign class starships into the fray to defend my allies