Voyage of the Marigold, by Andrew Stephens, is an interesting twist on classic Trek games.

Of course, the first Star Trek game was written in BASIC and involved searching the galaxy to find and destroy all invading Klingons. Easy to program (comparatively), fun to play, but missing the point of Star Trek, which is about learning to understand and co-exist with the unknown, not extinguish it.

Like the first Trek, in Voyage of the Marigold you’re exploring a grid, but—in contrast—you’re encountering strange new worlds and anomalies as you explore, and you’re responding to choice prompts rather than using a command menu. You’re in a hurry: there’s a cure to deliver, but you may need the added resources discovered in encounters to get it there. The first time I played through I basically always choose to leave a sector rather than engage with its encounter, driven by the need to deliver the cure quickly. But that mission failed, for I lacked the resources I needed. The author writes, “Your stated mission deserves all possible haste but exploration is much more satisfying in gameplay terms and necessary in most playthroughs. I recognized this issue early on but never came up with a good solution. In my defense one of my inspirations, FTL, has exactly the same problem.”

Voyage of the Marigold has a smaller grid to explore: 5×5, and the grid is a puzzle, as conditions make it impossible to travel in all directions. Unlike Star Trek, you’re not warping through space but hopping through hyperspace:

The direct course to Pacifica is blocked by the Shoals – a dense snaking nebula hundreds of sectors long and too dense for cross-hyperspace travel.

It’s here that the Shoals are narrowest. Even so, to get to Pacifica in time means braving unexplored passages and voids that will only allow for short hops through hyperspace. The Marigold is being loaded with enough fuel for 10 such jumps.

There’s other differences from Trek too, but there’s no denying that Star Trek is a primary inspiration.

The game is a great hybrid of hyperfiction and exploration of a randomly generated quadrant. It rewards repeated play: it took my seven playthroughs before I learned enough to succeed. You can play it at Voyage of the Marigold.