Star Trek: Resurgence presents, essentially, an episode of the sci-fi show in interactive, visual novel form.
Where Starfleet combat sims focus on phaser battles and starship strategy, and often struggle to capture the many facets of the show beyond the iconography, Dramatic Labs threads life’s moral quandaries, familial and political themes, and the sheer wonder of the universe throughout this game. Plus all the “Shields up, red alert!” and phaser fire you’d expect from a standard episode of ’90s Trek.
Originally released in 2023 on PC and non-Switch consoles, the dev team of Telltale veterans uses a two-protagonist narrative to deliver familiar (and, for fans, thrilling) starship activities aboard the USS Resolute. First Officer Jara Rydek and Petty Officer Carter Diaz give you perspectives spanning the ranks, combining day-to-day engineering and workplace shenanigans with investigation, political intrigue, and tension at the top, until the two characters eventually meet and their stories converge.
It’s a smart approach to split those two strands without contriving a single character to carry the narrative, solve diplomatic crises, counsel colleagues, beam down on away missions, scan anomalies, administer medical aid, and fix the warp core. The crew is still the star here, despite this being a Rydek/Diaz episode.
And it’s a decent episode, too; one that nails the show’s mise-en-scène and writing style. Split into chapters, the titles (all presented in Crillee Italic, naturally) riff on old episode names or notable lines from the franchise. We’re in the Lower Decks era, timeline fans; so, post-Nemesis, around a decade after TNG’s TV run ended, with Riker out there on the Titan and everyone wearing the late-season DS9/First Contact uniforms. The Resolute isn’t the sparkling new flagship, though, so there’s plenty of old 2360s LCARS colouring and design language from the earlier shows (plus some lovely Type 6 shuttles) mixed in with the sleeker, metallic sheens of the movies.
It’s on to this freshly refitted science vessel that Rydek arrives following an incident that tarnished not just the ship’s hull but her new CO’s reputation. Anxious to rehabilitate his career, Captain Solano needs his next mission to succeed at any cost. There’s tension amongst his crew, too, as others had been eyeing Rydek’s post.
Again, this is essentially an interactive novel. Beyond a couple of moments where you might push the left stick forward to walk along a prescribed path, you have zero direct control of your character; each environment presents static shots with interactable icons to investigate, each initiating a short scene. Dialogue options influence your relationships — the classic Telltale ‘X will remember that’ branching narrative setup — and the pause menu contains a summary of each character’s current opinion of you.
Beyond conversations, you get to operate equipment – reordering isolinear chips, modulating carrier beams, flipping open tricorders and scanning, that sort of thing. On a controller, you’ll be rotating sticks and pushing between icons, whereas in handheld mode the touchscreen has you pushing sliders and hitting prompts. It’s simple stuff, but well implemented.
Every ‘puzzle’ is broadly similar (move the tricorder around and scan across bands to find three substances, job done), but they’re brisk and pleasantly Trek-y, with all the right terminology and sound effects. Elsewhere in the audio department, although you don’t get any of the shows’ recognisable, roaring themes, the score does a fair job of approximating the mid-’90s auditory ambience of DS9 or Voyager.
Resurgence is definitely a budget production. The video quality varies between environments, but the Unreal Engine-powered visuals hold up surprisingly well on Switch, although it could use an optimisation pass on Switch 2, where things looked a little rougher to my eye. There’s some sleight of hand going on with prerendered video mixed in with rendered scenes (at least that’s what it feels like) and the image can be a little soft, the video a little choppy, with awkward pauses between selecting an action and awaiting the result. But it all just about hangs together, whether you’re playing docked or handheld.
On the topic of things that would raise a Vulcan’s eyebrow, Quick-Time Events feel as clunky and pointless as ever here. Elsewhere, a character appeared at their station missing some vital headwear before it magically materialised a couple of shots later. Another time, as the camera whip-panned around the bridge, I swear I glimpsed a Bolian I’d previously dismissed, too.
There’s a little jank around the edges, then – again, this isn’t the flagship. All that said, Dramatic Labs spent its resources in the right places, 100%. No, you can’t control your characters directly, but that restriction gives the devs total control over the camera and nearly every scene and environment feels like something that could have been shot on a Paramount soundstage in the Berman era (including a trip to ‘Planet Hell’), with good depth of field and strong direction grounding the story well enough that you don’t get hung up on minor tech hiccups or uncanny glide-walks.
The facial animation and voice work are excellent, too, conveying emotions accurately in the shows’ Shakespearean style, with writing quality to match. Carter’s got easygoing Geordi vibes which work well against Jara’s more sober, commanding presence, but both are likeable with the actors delivering great performances. It’s a testament to the writers and performers that Spock and Riker don’t feel shoehorned in for the fans, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell Piotr Michael’s excellent rendition from Nimoy himself. It’s all very well done.
Some crewmembers are more prickly than you’d expect on a Starfleet vessel, but I generally warmed to them – all except one, who offered only terrible takes and the worst recommendations. Perhaps other characters go into full-on sulks when you shut them down repeatedly, Worf-style, and this one did suffer personally due to a ‘needs of the many’ decision I made. In another playthrough, if I channelled my Mirror Universe self and made different choices, perhaps we could be best buds.
Beyond that one officer, though, one of the most attractive elements of Trek is well represented here: the competence porn of seeing professional, intelligent people doing jobs they enjoy, and well.
It’s been a while since I played Mass Effect, but the balance here between diplomacy, your own moral integrity, and the reality of the situation put me in that frame of mind. By tapping into a story with callbacks to a Season One TNG episode, you get a little TOS flavour, too: capricious godlike creatures, energy crystals, and some pleasant, ’60s-style hokum. For dyed-in-the-wool Trekkies, it’s exhilarating, although the ending — at least my ending — left a significant plot thread hanging in a way which felt unsatisfying.
Still, the “seven hours or more” before the credits rolled were solidly engaging. Resurgence doesn’t serve up dry starship resource management or frontier strategy – it’s all about the complex decision making and moral quandaries of actual Star Trek, plus the occasional thrill of saying “On screen” or “Engage” or “Energise”. It’s accurate enough with terminology across the board to satisfy anyone who knows photons from phase inducers, and just scanning crap with your tricorder is a thrill. It puts you in an episode, living that dream of being a hyper-competent Starfleet officer, working with diverse, clever, empathetic people towards the greater good. And looking fetching in a jumpsuit while you’re at it.
So, as episodes go, this is a good ‘un. Not a Best of Both Worlds — not something you’re going to dig out the Blurays for specifically — but a solid mid-Season Three-er that’s absolutely worth a (re)watch.
Conclusion
Star Trek: Resurgence is a modest enterprise, but Dramatic Labs did a stellar job of capturing the qualities of the show, specifically its ’90s era, with all the strengths and weaknesses thereof. As with the show, technically, you may notice some rough edges, but the creators have worked wonders with their resources. The visual novel stylings here suit the material, and it’s got it where it counts, with excellent writing and performances across the board.
Non-Trek fans won’t get half as much out of it, and you may not be tempted to go back for a second playthrough. But if the current crop of Trek shows isn’t quite scratching your itch, Resurgence does a great job of transporting you back a generation.
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