Star Trek: Bridge Crew was the ultimate ‘Trek’ game, and it needs a sequel. Make it so!

Captain’s log, stardate -302123.44142127107… or November 16, 2020, 7:41 pm for those not in Starfleet just yet. Much of the world was in lockdown, shielding away from the COVID-19 pandemic, and so was I. But thanks to having an HTC VR headset and Star Trek Bridge Crew, it felt as though lockdown was light-years away.

It was during this particular evening that a friend and I decided to try out the game developed by Red Storm Entertainment (under Ubisoft), just to see how Star Trek: Bridge Crew worked. I’d heard promising things, and as the game had been released exclusively for VR headsets initially, we thought we’d just give it a go for five minutes. Five minutes turned into a whole evening of us becoming Captains, Engineers, and Pilots, trying to make sure the Starship Enterprise didn’t blow up for the thousandth time.

We hadn’t laughed so hard in months, and it was all because of this quirky little VR game. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 has just ended, and Star Trek fever is high, but there’s no sign of a sequel to Bridge Crew in sight. And that’s… well, it’s a real shame, because Bridge Crew perfectly captured that Trek magic like few other games have.

Five years on, there’s no sign of a sequel on the horizon, and that’s a real shame, because we’ve got some great ideas for how to make it even better.

Bold new ideas

VR has come a long way in the five years since I played Bridge Crew, and so have co-op games, if we’re honest. Titles like Sea of Thieves and Void Crew have nailed how players can work together as a crew for a greater reward, all the while having fun and laughs along the way.

As the Void Crew review over at our sister site, PC Gamer, notes, “The end result is basically the best Firefly game ever made, with you, and as many friends as you can cram into the ship, waging a guerilla war in every direction, jumping away into the void just as things start to turn against you.”

Bridge Crew did it a little differently by making teamwork the primary function, but also keeping things static. You didn’t walk around, nor did you fight enemies during a mission. You simply sat at your station and worked with up to four friends to complete objectives on the bridge of the Enterprise. If Void Crew is about managing the chaos, Bridge Crew was about maintaining order, which suits the franchise.

We’d love to see a sequel that doubles down on what made Bridge Crew great, while taking influence from newer titles like Void Crew, allowing players to move freely around the ship. You could have someone taking on the role of engineer, like Scotty or LaForge from classic Star Trek episodes, hammering away in engineering, keeping the warp core stable, while the weapons officer mans their station on the bridge, letting loose with phasers and photon torpedoes. You could even mount boarding actions, hopping into the teleporter to board an enemy ship and take out key systems.

Heck, you could even lean into another of Star Trek’s strengths by using an episodic, mission-based structure. Part of what makes Star Trek great is the standalone episodes, “monster of the week” stories that are unbound by an overarching season-wide plot. A game where you and your friends feel like you’re actually in an episode of Star Trek, complete with dramatic music, cliffhanger fade-outs, and more, could amp up the immersiveness… and the potential for unintended comedy.

There is also a chance to make it accessible for players without VR headsets. Peripherals like a mouse and keyboard, and gamepads like a Sony DualSense, would work well when you’re in the role of the pilot on the Enterprise. Interestingly, Bridge Crew was patched in late 2017 to work without a VR headset, but this seems to have been swept under the Starfleet rug. But, whether Bridge Crew 2 is VR-exclusive or not, the freedom to roam the ship is a must-have for us.

United Federation of VR headsets

It’s now the far-flung future of 2025, and VR headsets are more common and accessible than ever before. The Meta Quest 3 and 3S are some of the most affordable products in the category, able to run games like Resident Evil 4 VR, Batman: Arkham Shadow, and more for under $300.

There are pricier options, of course, such as the HTC Vive Pro 2 or the eye-wateringly expensive Apple Vision Pro headset, available for a cool $3,500, which come with better visuals and more advanced features.

Taking advantage of advanced features like spatial awareness, hand gestures, and more could give a Bridge Crew sequel new ways to interact with the controls on the bridge, as well as interact with crewmates. All these different feature sets and operating systems can make it difficult to build a community, though.

Ensuring crossplay between VR platforms would be a must. I remember playing Sea of Thieves with this feature for the first time during the pandemic, where I’d be playing the game on my gaming PC, and a friend would be on their Xbox, but the experience was ultimately the same… but I’d go one step further — have crossplay between VR and non-VR gamers too. This isn’t some sci-fi technology like the holodeck; games like No Man’s Sky, Elite Dangerous, and even Valheim have shown that it can be done, and opening Bridge Crew 2 up to the much-larger console and PC gaming audience would do wonders for its reach and playerbase..

Much like how the United Federation of Planets establishes itself as an interstellar union across the galaxy bound by one government, we want a Bridge Crew 2 that allows players on a Vision Pro, a Meta Quest, an Xbox — or whatever platform they want — to join the same starship with friends and others.

The next generation

For the original Bridge Crew, what worked was the camaraderie, the teamwork, and the feeling of chatting in the ready room with your friends about how to do the next mission. It mirrored a lot of Star Trek episodes, and Bridge Crew was one of the only VR games that justified the category.

There was also a lot of goofy, silly fun to be had, whether it’s sending abusive hails or recreating dance moves to UK boy band 5ive (something we weren’t alone in).

Since then, games like Void Crew have amped up the experience of what made Bridge Crew so good, but part of what made that evening of November 16 so memorable was the escapism. I was in a starship, light-years away from the horrible reality of what was going on at the time. It drew on the essence of what has made Star Trek so watchable since its debut in 1966, with teamwork that fights the big unknown, but making friends along the way. A sequel could build on those tropes and expand upon the excellent groundwork of the original.

Perhaps it was just a case of the right game at the right time, and maybe a sequel will never be able to live up to that memory — no matter how good it is — but there’s only one way to find out. Make Star Trek: Bridge Crew 2, you cowards!

Star Trek: Bridge Crew is available on PC (playable in both VR and non-VR). Void Crew is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.