Paramount Games Group and Bloober Team have announced Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a brand-new cinematic horror game set in the beloved sci-fi universe. The first true cinematic Trek game since 2013’s dismal movie tie-in game, the upcoming adventure is just the start of a new era of gaming for the franchise.
As anyone who has paid attention will know, there has been a resurgence in Trek games as of late, including the recently-delisted Star Trek: Resurgence. With that said, Shadow Frontier is much more ambitious, and serves as the start of a renewed push to expand the franchise properly towards today’s gaming audiences.
Speaking to GameFile after the announcement of Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, head of creative and production at Paramount Games Group Shawn Kittelsen explained that Trek needs to expand out of its PC-centric releases. “There haven’t been a lot of bigger console releases, especially in recent generations, for Trek,” they explained.
Kittelsen, who has helped create games such as Arkham City, Injustice, Mortal Kombat 11, and more, explained that there’s a need to diversify the types of games Star Trek is associated with. Similarly to Warhammer, which used to be mainly strategy games but has now branched out to limitless genres, Trek has a potential to be more. “I love 4X strategy,” he said, “but I think you can overserve that.”
Alongside Shadow Frontier, Paramount announced a second Trek game for PC, which has a demo available right now. Dubbed Outposts Unknown, the narrative-driven outpost builder is set alongside the era of Strange New Worlds, giving fans more options to explore the eras they love in video game form.
“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,” he continued. “We wanted to do something that’s more interesting and engaging and will get people’s attention.”
Kittelsen teased that this is just the start for more ambitious Trek games. Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is likened to games like Hellblade, cinematic action titles that focus intently on a single character and their psyche. “There’s plenty of Star Trek episodes in which a character really goes deep into a conflict within themselves,” he said.
Unlike prior Star Trek action games, such as the aforementioned 2013 disaster, Shadow Frontier is more of a “character study”. Focused on TNG’s Ro Laren—who also appeared in the disappointing Picard show—the game plans to “go deep with this one character” while also giving fans “the chance to explore aspects of the lore that haven’t been as developed in games before”.
In the game, players will take Laren through a planet-wide ship graveyard overtaken by a mysterious entity. Alongside combat, the game will see players make use of traditional Trek gadgets, such as the tricorder, to solve puzzles and discover more about the planet around them.
There is currently no release date for Star Trek: Shadow Frontier at the time of writing. However, the game is targeting PC, PS5, XBOX Series, and Nintendo Switch 2.
