CGA Trek

The Good,.. The Bad,.. and the Ugly! Firstly, if you bought this game, you have almost certainly bought it out of nostalgia of one of the many iterations of it so i wont insult you by talking too much about its mechanics. Firstly,,the good! > The game is exactly what you expect it to be. Its a simple recreation of one of the earliest iterations of Trek while avoiding any infringement on intellectual property. The interface is relatively smooth and easy to use. > The theme tune is also pretty catchy if you turn the volume down to eliminate the tinny-ness. > Its like £2.24 to buy. Its literally less than half the price of a decent cup of coffee. Cant go wrong with that. The Bad.. > Theres a few Glaringly obvious bugs in the game, namely when you complete it, the final game over screen is persistent, if you leave the game, continue takes you back to it, a final debrief screen would be nice. Also, an annoying visual bug that overlaps the edges of the sector view, quite annoying, shouldn't really have been missed. > Difficulty scaling. - iive played this for 2.5 hours, completed all difficulty levels, barely posed a challenge. Definately not what i expected from the top difficulty level. The Ugly.... > This sub heading is apt, Although clearly aiming for nostalgic simplicity, i think the target was placed a little too far back so to speak... To elaborate... i'm in my late 40's so a little young to have played this version, but in my early teens i played EGA Trek, on an amstrad PC 6140 As the name would suggest, i played in EGA 16 colour pallette, and it was a vastly superior game in every aspect, visually, ergonomically, and content, the EGA version had so much more challenges, tasks, random events, and things to do. If i'm honest, i expected this version to be more like that content wise, if it was, i would have literally payed 3 or 4 times more for it. If i'm honest, i was a little disappointed by the lack of content from later releases, though i expected as much based on the store price. > Another reason i feel this remake aimed a little too far back, The origional audience of this version are likely in their mid 60's to mid 70's now if they're still around. another reason why the dev should have based it on a later game. > Despite some excellent use of a 4 colour pallette, Its still a 4 colour pallette. I wasnt expecting an unreal 5 remake, but it is just plain ugly even if it is somewhat charming. Conclusion... If you're familliar with this game in any of its previous forms, this is worth the loose change asking price... but bear in mind youre getting a loose change quality game... I don't regret buying this, but it reminds me of my 80's school report card.. "Could do better."

I've always enjoyed games like WinTrek and EGA Trek. Even without the deeper scientific and diplomatic aspects of Star Trek, I appreciated that they were games of resource management and tactical positioning rather than the reflex reaction and muscle memory of many games (including Star Trek-branded games) that present space combat as arcade dogfighting. This is truer to the experience of commanding a 300 meter long vessel in battle, which is why it's such a shame that this particular sub-genre of games that are similar to the 1971 Star Trek text game (hereafter referred to as "Treklikes") has been so poorly serviced in the last 25 years. Fortunately for those of us who recall Treklikes with fondness, CGA Trek is a significant step in the right direction. Deliberately cheesy presentation combines with genuinely tactical and exhilarating gameplay to create a familiar Treklike experience, but one that puts just enough of its own unique spin on the sub-genre to be entirely worth the minimal asking price. If you've ever enjoyed a Treklike, or you just have an interest in ship combat that emphasizes the broader strategic concerns over the moment-to-moment action, I heartily recommend giving this developer (someone I've found to be genuine and receptive to feedback in my interactions with them) your support. You can consider these two paragraphs to be a complete review if you wish, or you can read on for deeper analysis. To elaborate regarding the presentation, CGA Trek purposefully invokes an older school of graphical processing than those used by some of the most prominent and (sadly) most recent Treklikes of the 90s. With only four colours, the presentation is stark and can admittedly be harsh on the eyes at times, but is also completely unmistakable. It's a unique look and the developer has fortunately made a wide array of different, historically accurate CGA (Colour Graphics Adapter) colour palettes available for the player to use, so you can use a gentler colour scheme than the harsh magenta if you wish. I personally recommend Cyan High, especially as with this palette the frequently barked "Cyan Alert!" still make sense. Beyond this, the game is very clean and easy to read, and even includes a surprisingly beautiful (if largely non-impactful to gameplay) viewscreen view, which helps immersion significantly to get into that true Star Trek bridge officer mindset. Speaking of barks, the game includes period-accurate voice synthesis (voiced dialogue being a feature that as far as I'm aware is unique among Treklikes) for the acknowledgements of your crew and the (surprisingly satisfying) death cries of your enemies. Dialogue is heavily referential and the game's writing overall is extremely heavy-handed parody of classic Star Trek, but it succeeds in adding a great deal of flavour to the game and seldom grows stale thanks to extremely clever way the game slightly varies the pitch and tone of each line each time it is spoken, making repeated lines about shields and torpedoes far less grating on the ears and a lot more charming in their obnoxiousness instead. The game also manages to build a strong, bouncy soundtrack from its purposefully limited toolset. In terms of gameplay, the fundamental tenants of the Treklike are in place - the galaxy is divided into an 8x8 grid and each co-ordinate within that 8x8 grid is represented by its own 8x8 grid featuring ships, stars, and bases. You must use your limited energy and torpedoes wisely to destroy enemy ships within a time limit. Gameplay is turn-based, but time advances from performing most actions. The challenge comes from managing your resources and mitigating damage to your ship (damaged systems take time to repair and leave you vulnerable, after all) while efficiently destroying your foes and refilling your resources at bases and planets. Routing, positioning, and being mindful of possible enemy reinforcements from adjacent grid squares are essential, which is further emphasized by the (again, so far as I know) unique shield system among the sub-genre, which lets you spend a small amount of energy to perfectly absorb a discrete number of hits from discrete facings (forward, port, starboard, and aft). This significantly enables but also complicates your tactical decision-making. You also have to keep in mind that different kinds of bases offer different benefits and cost different amounts of time to dock with. You'll need both luck and good forward planning to improve on your best time. While it had a lot of problems on release that the developer has since been able to address, in its current form I find CGA Trek very engaging. It's not the most in-depth Treklike out there (the game it is most directly re/demaking, EGA Trek, has many additional gameplay features and complications that are not present in CGA Trek), but has enough going on that you need to keep track of that it is quite satisfying to play well, and has more visceral appeal due to the clever use of sound effects and pixel art than most of its contemporaries. Being a relatively simple and content-short game, I wouldn't call CGA Trek the quintessential Treklike experience, but it absolutely is worth your time and money for only $3. So far as I'm concerned, the quintessential Treklike does not currently exist. EGA Trek is certainly the closest, but shows many crow's feet given its advanced age, not the least of which is its greatly inferior audiovisual design as compared with CGA Trek. As a stepping stone on the path to hopefully one day inspiring a larger and more comprehensive project, however, I consider CGA Trek to be an extremely worthwhile and promising game, and I hope somebody plays it and allows this quirky little cyan and magenta space adventure to inspire them to true greatness. It's high-time that Treklikes made a comeback. That starts right here and right now, with a purchase of CGA Trek. Make it so and bring ship to Cyan Alert!

Space.....The Final Frontier! Excellent Game :)

It's the old Star Trek strategy game, but with an eye searing palette and several gameplay changes: Adjustable and customizable difficulty, you regenerate energy as long as you have the generator on, and the timer signifying doom is removed, your high score is how fast you can clear the sector of Legally Distinct Aliens. Dr. Sbaitso does an amazing job voicing the crew, especially Scotty. You can beat hard mode in a half hour, but it's fun and costs about a small coffee.

When I saw this I thought of the commodore 64 Star Trek floppy disk game my parents had when I was a kid, I played that thing like crazy. Great job and keep up the good work. Only thing that would make it better is a wider color palettes option.

Cyan Alert! It hurts my eyes and offends my ears but I am enjoying 'CGA Trek' Based on the earliest Trek games originally programmed by nerds with access to mainframe computers in the 70s and rendered in a colour scheme that ruined many a PC game in the 80s. It's disgusting and I love it! Developed on Linux with Godot and the Dev is very responsive. Try out their other games too!

Who up photorping they Romeulans?

EDIT: HOT ADVICE! Be patient. If your torpedo gets stuck, hit the ESC key and open the settings once before returning to the game. That seems to help with this little bug. I invested that Latinum well. That game is funny as a Warpcore breach.

Don't let the eye bleeding cyan fool you, this game actually has the most well thought out UI and UX for a Starfleet/Startrek game from the 80s. Well worth the money to support the dev.

simple nostalgic fun.