Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown

A licensed Star Trek game that's actually trying to be a game

"Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown" puts players in command-adjacent decisions aboard Voyager as it tries to survive the trip home through the Delta Quadrant, told through a resource-management, choice-driven structure rather than combat or exploration in the traditional sense. What stands out most in the reviews isn't any single mechanic — it's relief that a Star Trek game was made this way at all. "It's really nice to play a modern Star Trek game that isn't built for mobile or filled with $50 microtransactions for a new ship, it feels like a real game," wrote one player, and that sentiment of gratitude for the format shows up constantly, even from reviewers with serious complaints about the execution.

The comparison reviewers reach for most often, independently and repeatedly, is Oregon Trail. "My buddy asked me what this game was like. It took me too long to tell him that this is Oregon Trail set in the Delta Quadrant. I love it," wrote one player. A second reviewer arrived at the identical framing from someone else's description: "Someone on the Internet described it best for us old folks.... This game is the 'Star Trek version of Oregon Trail.'" A third made the same comparison while flagging the same missing feature both other reviewers wanted: "If you like Oregon Trail. You can definitely like this game... Right now it's missing a save scum option, because there's an awful lot of failure - just like Oregon Trail." Three independent reviewers landing on the same comparison, right down to the shared complaint about save scumming, says a lot about both what the game is and where it frustrates people.

The tone lands, even for skeptics

Reviewers who came in specifically for Voyager's particular mood — competence and quiet loneliness rather than swashbuckling adventure — consistently say the game gets that right. One detailed review broke it down by category: "Gameplay 7/10 Graphics 6/10 Writing 9/10 Replayability 8/10 Game Design 8/10 Overall 8.5/10. There's a certain tone that Star Trek: Voyager had: a mix of adventure, loneliness, competence, and quiet loyal decency, that was pretty special." Another player described the emotional weight of specific choices: "Making decisions Janeway couldn't is fun, opposing her is better, but being in the context of perilous survival and realizing I would have made the same choice she did hits hard." A third player who pushed 60% through a run before hitting an unrecoverable spiral described the resource pressure in terms fans of the show will recognize instantly: "The resource issues and hull damage mechanics are pretty brutal, giving you a real Year of Hell vibe."

The save system is the game's biggest unforced error

By far the single most repeated, most specific complaint across this game's reviews is the absence of a manual save option, paired with an autosave system players describe as unpredictable and punishing. "The lack of a proper save system causes this to get a thumbs down. It basically auto saves when it wants to...but you don't know when this occurs. There is no manual save at all and it doesn't save on exit. If you need to leave or stop playing suddenly, you may lose a lot of progress," wrote one player. A second, 15-hour player independently confirmed the exact same limitation: "Cant save the game on exit, or any other time." A third review went further, quoting the developers' own stated justification and rejecting it directly: "the latest developer update regarding the saving mechanism is nothing short of a bureaucratic insult to the players' time. The developers claim that implementing a basic 'Save on Quit' or manual save feature is 'complicated' and might diminish 'crucial game design decisions.' Let's be clear: Losing hours of progress due to real-life interruptions is not a 'design decision'; it is a technical failure." Even a broadly positive review conceded the point outright: "Yes, the save system is garbage and needs to be fixed."

A pricing backlash on top of the design complaint

A second cluster of negative reviews targets the game's monetization rather than its mechanics. Multiple players who bought a premium edition specifically to support the license reported feeling burned by a season pass priced above the base game itself. "I purchased the deluxe edition to show my support for a quality Star Trek game but that stops here. The fact that you have a 'season pass' like a predatory AAA title is bad enough, but the fact that they have the gall to make it cost more than the base game is absolutely disgusting," one reviewer wrote. A separate review raised the same day-one-DLC complaint independently: "First of all there's no excuse for Day 1 DLC. I am fed up of companies chopping bits out of games and flogging it to us for extra and calling it deluxe / premium etc."

Text-heavy, thinly voiced, and RNG-dependent

Beyond the save system, reviewers repeatedly note the game is almost entirely text-based, with voice acting limited to a brief cameo appearance. "So far Robert Duncan Mcneil has just been there for the intro, and i suspect thats all he'll be there for. Just enough to say that hes in the game," observed one player. Another was blunter about how that lands for a big-budget-priced release: "I'm a huge fan of Star Trek... Not so much of this game. It's basically a glorified visual novel. Gameplay involves... lots of reading, which I truly don't mind, but there's next to no voice acting, hardly any animations."

RNG dependency is the other recurring structural complaint, with several reviewers reporting careful, well-managed runs collapsing due to bad rolls rather than player error. "You can do absolutely fine, have everything topped off and upgrade all your equipment and then a series of bad rolls mean you have to restart an entire sector because you're in a literally unwinnable situation," wrote one player, and a separate, more critical review agreed the tactical layer beneath the RNG is thin: "The 'missions' are pure RNG with very little in the way of tactics outside of 'pick the crew member with the biggest number.'" The unskippable opening tutorial compounds the frustration of losing progress to any of these issues: "Whatever moron thought it was a good idea to not allow you to skip the 30+ minute forced tutorial whenever you start a new save file needs to never work in game design again."

Verdict

"Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown" earns real, repeated praise for nailing Voyager's specific tone and for existing as a proper resource-management game rather than a mobile-style cash grab wearing Star Trek skin — three separate reviewers independently reaching for the same Oregon Trail comparison speaks to a distinctive, coherent identity. But it undercuts that goodwill badly with a save system multiple players call broken, a season-pass pricing structure that alienated some of its most supportive early buyers, and enough RNG-driven unfairness that careful, competent play doesn't reliably protect a run. Voyager fans willing to treat lost progress as part of the deal, and to accept a mostly-text presentation, will likely find the tone worth the frustration. Anyone buying primarily for polished production values or a fair difficulty curve should wait for patches, or wait for a sale that reflects the current state of the game rather than its full asking price.