Trek Throwback Thursday: Starship Creator

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Star Trek Starship Creator (PC) 1998


Star Trek Starship Creator was developed by Imergy and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive in 1998 for Windows 95-XP and MacOS 7.5-9.  To call it a game is a bit of a stretch.  "Software toy" would be a better description.  As the name implies, it lets you create a starship (from one of 7 classes, the add-on pack released in 1999 adds 3 more classes) assign a crew from a list of characters from TOS,TNG, DS9, and Voyager and the movies and send the ship on pre-scripted missions.  Add-on pack also introduces the ability to send 2 ships on a mission simultaneously.  For those who are up for a bit of scripting, custom missions and crewmembers can be added.  The sequel, Starship Creator Warp II released in 2000 added some additional missions, a non federation ship class, and attempts to maked creating custom missions and custom crewmembers easier.

Like Simon & Schuster's other trek offerings from the mid and late 90s the program is mostly built around copious quicktime events with an LCARS-esque interface.  Although this makes the "game" somewhat limited functionally, it still has the charm of a retro program from that time.


The Pros:

-Getting to make and control your own ships crewed by your favorite characters from the shows

-Relatively simple interface, not much of a learning curve, easy to pick up and play

-Some of the missions are based, loosely on actual episodes.  More or less.


The Cons:

-A very limited number of missions, ultimately making the game repetitive

-The ability to send 2 ships on a mission simultaneously in the add-on pack and Warp II is not co-op but simply two ship running the same mission

-The very limited number of variations for the ship designs (3-4 primary hulls, secondary hulls, nacelles for each class) really limits the shipbuilding potential.  Also the ships design is only cosmetic, it has no effect on how the ship performs missions. 

-All customization of your ships is in the systems you install and the crew you select.  Each ship class has a specific set of options for the systems you can choose, however the similarities in the available selections for similar classes renders some classes like Excelsior and Akira redundant and other like Oberth (in the add-on pack) pointless.

-Although crewmembers can be killed during missions, and ships can be damaged and require repair, ships cannot be truly destroyed.  This significantly lowers the stakes.


Overall, Not much of a real game, but it's a good time waster.  Fun to play for hardcore fans, or total nerds, but for the casual player, probably a pass.  

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