Bloober Team is making Star Trek horror with Ro Laren, and PC Gamer is skeptical

Bloober Team is making a Star Trek horror game, featuring Ro Laren as the protagonist, and the PC Gamer take is blunt: it is wild enough to work, but not the one they expect to land.

PC Gamer frames the announcement as a genuine “wait, really?” moment, because it combines a high-profile licence with a genre that feels mis-matched. Star Trek is known for optimism and ensemble storytelling, while Bloober Team’s horror style tends to skew pessimistic. The result is a collision of incentives and aesthetics that could either feel like a smart recontextualization, or like a setting slap-on that forgets what makes Trek Trek.

To understand the stake, start with why Star Trek games matter at all. PC Gamer points out that Star Trek has been fertile ground for games, but underutilised in practice, leaving only a “meagre handful of good adaptations.” When you have a brand with that much cultural cachet and so few consistently strong game entries, every new pitch is suddenly more than a creative experiment. It is a test of whether the licence can still reliably translate into interactive storytelling, and whether it can do so without turning into jump scares in a Starfleet-themed skin.

Now zoom in on why this specific pitch is polarizing. PC Gamer argues that horror is not in Star Trek’s DNA, and Bloober Team’s usual approach does not match Star Trek’s unrelenting optimism. That mismatch is the core tension. Horror typically thrives on dread, vulnerability, and pessimism. Star Trek typically aims at moral clarity, teamwork, and forward motion, even when things get dark. If you do not reconcile those different emotional engines early, the product can feel like it is borrowing the brand’s words while replacing the franchise’s soul.

Ro Laren complicates the picture, but also gives Bloober Team one decision PC Gamer thinks “actually kinda makes sense.” Ro is described as one of the least Starfleet characters to ever don the uniform, more like a lone wolf action hero with a chip on their shoulder. From a creative standpoint, pairing a horror protagonist with a character already framed as an outsider is a clever way to soften the tonal jolt. PC Gamer also notes that Ro was designed to be the opposite of Starfleet ideals, and that her relationship with Picard led her to eventually put her ego aside, temporarily. In other words, the franchise already has an internal logic for “someone out of place.”

But PC Gamer’s skepticism is that Ro is still an outlier, and making the game mostly about her exploits may not feel “properly Star Trek.” The argument is not that the franchise cannot support genre shifts. In fact, PC Gamer spends real time on the idea that it can, because Star Trek has demonstrated breadth. The example: Strange New Worlds, with episodes that try hard to make the Gorn terrifying, and First Contact, which PC Gamer calls horror-adjacent and includes scenes that would not look out of place in a full-blown horror film. Even then, PC Gamer says First Contact undermines the horror-fit critique by being cushioned by its more heroic, high-performing status as “arguably the best Star Trek film.” The point: even when Trek flirts with horror, it still needs to remain Trek.

What PC Gamer suggests is that Star Trek works when it keeps the “critical components” that define the experience. They specifically cite the adventure of the week format, teamwork, high-concept sci-fi nonsense, interpersonal drama, and even the time it took Star Trek to “figure out” that drama before it went hard. That is why they look at Ro-centric horror and see a likely structural problem: the horror setup PC Gamer describes is Ro stranded on a deadly alien world, flying solo. That premise can be tense, but it does not naturally leave room for the ensemble behaviors and recurring story rhythms that fans treat as canon-worthy.

The comparison that lands hardest is pacing. PC Gamer is comfortable with a “45 minute episode” equivalent as a genre detour. It is the hours and hours version that triggers concern. Their worry is not just tone, but cadence: Trek episodes usually return to the Enterprise, with crews and captains doing the kind of mixed-format fun that defines the show, even when the plot gets heavy. A long-form horror game might crowd out that balance and reduce Trek to “a setting you can slap any old story onto,” unlike Star Wars, which can more readily absorb that approach.

There is also a second-order market reality tucked into the piece. PC Gamer says Silent Hill 2 Remake is well regarded, but they fear Bloober Team could fall back on cheap jump scares and trite psychological horror “without the bones of another game to fall back on.” That is not a claim about what Bloober Team will do, but it is a reminder of how adaptation and remake pipelines can shape perceived quality. In brand terms, when a franchise with few strong game adaptations enters a new genre lane, the margin for tonal missteps shrinks.

The piece ends by widening the frame: this is not the only Star Trek game path available. PC Gamer mentions Star Trek Outposts Unknown, a colony builder shown during the PC Gaming Show, and Star Trek Online, described as “brilliant” though “a bit creaky.” For studios and boards, the implication is clear: licence value is not just one big swing. The “final frontier” still produces adventures, but diversification is a risk-management strategy when one approach might not resonate with the franchise’s default emotional settings.