Kirk, Data, and Seven of Nine walk into a holodeck…
Taking advantage of the Star Trek fiction’s multiple dimensions, Star Trek Timelines allows you to build your fantasy ship with characters from every series, story, and spinoff of Gene Roddenberry’s classic sci-fi. A simple card based system allows you to enjoy developing crew through turn-based away missions and space battles.
Make is so…
When the character Q was introduced to the Star Trek, I wonder if the writers knew how important to the fiction? The omnipotent chaotic force of Q makes anything possible, something Star Trek Timelines takes full advantage of pulling in cast from every era of the Star Trek TV shows.
Not that you pay much attention to the overarching plot, it’s the minutia that captures your attention. For me this is particularly true when guiding an away team made up of Picard, Sulu, and Mayweather against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance – a stunning blend of series and dimensions.
Space battles are one of the main activities in Star Trek Timelines. Most of your power is dictated by your ship, but it is bolstered by your captain and a selected crew member. Combat takes place automatically, with your ships battling for position and your only interaction being to tap on character’s images to activate their additional buffs: increased shields, power, or evasion. Easy, fun to watch, and quite tense when the difficulty ramps up and you must time using your powers more carefully.
Beam me up…
The other core element of Star Trek Timelines are the away missions. Like the ship battles these rely greatly on preset numbers, only this time the focus is your crew’s abilities.
You select three characters to take to the planet and then send them, one at a time, up against a preset gauntlet of branching challenges. Before selecting a branch of a quest you are given some idea of the skills needed. This leaves you guessing who to send, do you send your best diplomat to the conference? Or hold them back until next stage, because they must skip around to recharge after a task.
Of course the heart of Star Trek Timelines is fan service. There are hundreds of great looking cards to unlock from the time portal, all pulled from some corner of the shows fiction and faithfully reproduced. As you may expect from a free-to-play game, these can be earned or purchased in-app, and they can all be leveled up through play or by equipping items. Unfortunately this does descend into pay-to-win at times, but as a single player game this is forgivable.
Only for fans, but a must for fans
With characters and ships from Star Trek The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, and the often forgotten Enterprise, even the most eclectic fans should be able to build their perfect crew in Timelines.
Sure, the gameplay is simple and relies a little too much on watching numbers go up until you are powerful enough to progress – but it manages to create some tense moments that feel in keeping with the show. Plus, the character art and audio is fantastic.
