Star Trek: Outposts Unknown Review: A Cosy Colony Sim in Starfleet Colours

Star Trek games usually put you in the captain's chair or behind a phaser. Star Trek: Outposts Unknown, from Magic Fuel Games and publisher Playstack, does something the franchise has never done: it hands you a construction menu. It launches today, October 20, 2026, on PC via Steam for $32.99, with Mac support promised in a later patch and no other platforms confirmed.

What it is

You command the U.S.S. Resonant, sent to the remote X'Lehari System in the 23rd century - the same era as Strange New Worlds - to help a local civilisation facing catastrophe. The threat is a mysterious Tetryon Rift, and your answer is very Starfleet: build research outposts, study the problem, and keep your people alive while you do it. It's an original story, not a tie-in to the show, which I think is the right call.

How it plays

Under the uniform this is a real-time-with-pause colony builder. You set up facilities on planets like temperate Daegus and the volcanic and icy Kourou, keep them supplied with power, and work through tech and building trees. The production chain is the meat of it: more than 55 materials can be researched, harvested and manufactured, and connecting them into a working network is genuinely satisfying. Crew members get specialised roles, officers grow their abilities, and morale and skill get tested when things go wrong - which, this being Star Trek, they regularly do.

The best thing about it is the tone. Problems are solved with science, the crew talk like Starfleet officers rather than space marines, and an outpost humming along with a dozen specialists feels like a small, competent Federation in miniature. Fans will smile a lot.

The lows

As a colony sim it rarely surprises. If you've played RimWorld, Surviving Mars or Oxygen Not Included, you'll recognise every system, and none of them goes as deep or gets as wild. The story beats give structure, but they also put the game on rails: you're building toward the next narrative milestone more than toward your own ideas. And $32.99 is on the high side for what is a modest, if polished, production - the licence is clearly part of the price.

System requirements are not trivial either: 16 GB RAM and a GTX 1660 at minimum, so older laptops are out.

Who it's for

Star Trek fans who like slow management games are the perfect audience, and the German localisation (one of eight supported languages) helps. Colony-sim veterans who don't care about the licence can wait for a sale. In our region it's PC only for now, so console players are out of luck.

Verdict: a warm, well-made and very Star Trek outpost builder that's more comfortable than bold. Good mission, safe course.

Score: 7/10

Image: FlugKerl2 / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NCC-1701_Prop.jpg