And it will be a lot.
CBS has announced a partnership with Scopely — who already make the Star Trek: Fleet Command game for mobile platforms — to release Star Trek: Kobayashi Maru, a retro-stylised decision-making game that puts you in the hot seat as a Starfleet cadet preparing to take the academy’s most infamous command-track test: the Kobayashi Maru.
In Star Trek lore, the “no-win scenario” test sees cadets commanding a Starfleet vessel as it comes across a distress signal from the Kobayashi Maru, a damaged civilian freighter that finds itself adrift in Klingon territory. It’s meant to humble potential Captains with the idea that not every situation they will encounter aboard a Starfleet vessel has a positive outcome, that sometimes, hard decisions will be made and lives lost because there is no magically “right” answer.
That is, unless you’re James T. Kirk, and the magically right answer is to hack the test program and cheat your way to victory in protest.
Sadly, you can’t pull a Kirk in the new game, but there is a 1:10,000 chance that you can actually beat Star Trek: Kobayashi Maru, as you make your own decisions exploring Federation space. There are also a zillion extra ways for you to fail even beyond getting into a skirmish with the Klingons like in the original test, meaning some choices you make could mean you and your crew mess up well before you even make it to the distress signal in the first place.
But if you do win, there are prizes to be had: the first three people to find a way to beat Star Trek: Kobayashi Maru will win things like Star Trek merch and, if you’re in a country where it’s actually available, a lifetime subscription to CBS All Access (née Paramount+).
If you want to see if you’ve got what it takes to best the Kobayashi Maru, or just how badly you can fail it, you can check out the game here.
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