As a dedicated Trekkie, I would be very skeptical about any game claiming to be “Star Trek” even if it was produced by the original franchise. With “Star Trek Timelines” I was pleasantly surprised. This is game for mobile platforms available for free with paid boosts and privileges.
When I first played the game, I was fascinated by the introduction by Q with the voice of the original actor: John de Lancie. The texts are flawless and the story both original and consistent with the whole Star Trek lore. Basically, the developers have managed to merge the characters from all Star Trek series in one game. How is this possible? Well, an apparent anomaly has caused a distortion in the time and space continuum… now all parallel realities along with the future and the past exist together. As the game progresses, the player collects heroes, Star Trek characters, from different timelines that have different strengths. For example, there is a Commander Riker, and Admiral Riker and a Lieutenant Thomas Riker as well. It is interesting that the player can add alien characters to its crew, like Jem’Hadar warriors, Bajoran priests, Klingons that are not in Starfleet etc.
The whole initial experience of the graphics and voice actors is thrilling. As the game progresses though, it becomes apparent that the game mechanics are very similar to those of Heroes Charge or Marvel Avengers. All these games are based on developing and equipping chars/heroes that the player collects during the game. The actions are limited by Croniton particles that can be gained only as time passes. So if you used up all your 40 Croniton units in ingame actions you have to wait around 4 hours for the energy to refill. That significantly reduces the thrill of the game as you either have to set an alarm every 4 hours or buy Chronitons.
The game features space battles, strategical trials, Player vs Player, special missions, events and a sort of research feature with quests to become friendly-exalted with various factions.
The most stunning aspect of the game is the fact that one can travel to distant systems and view the galaxy from the ships 3D perspective. It’s only a stationary view but it is still impressive.
Is the game worth playing? If you are a Trekkie: absolutely! If you are not a Trekkie you can still start educating yourself 🙂 by watching the series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and then proceeding to “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Star Trek: Deep Space 9”. Then is the time to go back to the Original Series and start watching the films!
Before I log off here are the characters I have managed to accumulate while playing the game for the past couple of days. The limit of characters is 25 so I had to let some go to attempt to get better ones:
(Name Lvl and strength in stars)
Lt Commander Data 37 **
Counselor Troi 32 *
Enterprise-D Picard 31 **
Lt Sulu 30 *
Third Remata’Klan 28 ***
Commander Riker 27 **
Lt Tasha Yar 23 **
Chief Engineer Torres 23 *
Constable Odo 20 ***
Lt Naomi Wildman 20 **
Desert Ezri Dax 20 *
Commander Spock 20 *
Ensign Chekov 20 *
Nurse Paris 16 **
Commander Kor 10 ***
Away Team Archer 10 **
Persis 10 **
Security Chief Worf 10 **
Dr Phlox 10 **
Lt Commander Scott 10 **
Ensign Kim 10 *
CMO ‘Bones’ McCoy 8 *
Bartender Quark 7 *
Each character has 1 to 3 specific qualities from the 6 available ones: Command, Diplomacy, Engineering, Security, Medicine, Science. Also, characters have additional qualities according to their interests, origins etc. For example Picard has exo-archaeology, Data has exo-biology, Troi is an Empath, Picard a Diplomat etc. These qualities are mandatory for some missions, so the choice of characters becomes very important.