Star Trek: Shadow Frontier Announced as 2027

Paramount Games and developer Bloober Team have announced Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a survival-horror video game set for release in 2027. The game will feature Michelle Forbes reprising her role as former Lieutenant Ro Laren, who crash-lands on a distant planet consumed by a mysterious hive mind.

The upcoming third-person action-adventure marks a significant genre shift for the franchise. The game will focus on psychological terror and survival rather than traditional Star Trek exploration or space combat. Bloober describes the game as a mature psychological adventure built around exploration, combat, and survival, promising to terrify players in ways the franchise hasn't done since some of its darkest Borg and body-horror episodes.

A New Horror Frontier

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier will place players in a hostile environment filled with grotesque creatures, environmental dangers, disturbing visions, and a force attempting to invade and absorb Ro Laren's consciousness. Players will need to decide when to fight and when to evade enemies while investigating the planet, solving puzzles, and using familiar Star Trek technology such as the Tricorder and Phaser.

Star Trek's Genre Flexibility

The source notes that Star Trek has regularly reinvented itself by venturing into different genres across its television history. From the political drama and wartime storytelling of Deep Space Nine to the mystery of Discovery, and from The Next Generation's courtroom drama to Voyager's survival stories, the franchise has shown remarkable range. More recent shows like Lower Decks (animated workplace comedy), Picard (conspiracy drama), and Strange New Worlds (experimenting with romance, musicals, and puppets) have stretched the formula even further.

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is presented as a natural extension of this flexibility, leaning into the franchise's ability to move between genres without losing its core identity. It aims to prove Star Trek can support a genuinely frightening survival experience and not rely so heavily on callbacks to familiar technology, characters, and tropes from other entries.

Past Forays into Fear and Future Boldness

The Screen Rant report states that Star Trek has flirted with horror before, particularly through the Borg’s disturbing assimilation process, episodes involving parasitic creatures and grotesque physical transformations, and stories built around psychological terror. Shadow Frontier promises to take these elements further, reframing one of the franchise's iconic concepts through the lens of survival horror.

The announcement coincides with Star Trek's 60th anniversary celebration this year, marking six decades since The Original Series first aired. The franchise's longevity has always depended on its ability to venture well beyond straightforward stories about spaceships, aliens, and futuristic technology. The 2027 release of Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, delving into survival-horror like never before, represents its latest bold new direction.