Lower Decks: The Badgey Directive

Eastside Games have now offered up the Lower Decks mobile game and I've been hacking away at it for a couple of weeks.

Star Trek mobile games are nothing new but in the big landscape of the franchise many have fallen by the wayside leaving just two that dominate the handheld realm; Timelines and Fleet Command. 

The second of those has had some serious heavyweight marketing too with the likes of Sonequa Martin-Green, Rainn Wilson, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton and Jonathan Frakes all appearing in its adverts. Both this and Timelines have run for a number of years unchallenged. While I've stepped away from mobile gaming as a whole in the last 18 months after what seemed like a religious conviction to play Timelines, I thought I might give this one a go. It couldn't hurt...!

The basic premise is that there are a series of holodeck simulations running and you just need to collect resources be it latinum,  dilithium and credits. Each of these simulations can then be upgraded, more crew can be assigned and key characters from the Lower Decks series can be used to automate the simulation. These in turn produce more items at a faster rate without you having to sit there and collect resources every 30 seconds (or longer).

Simulations in the game include the Shuttle Bay, Main Engineering, the Klingon Rite of Ascension, Kaminar, Chateau Picard and two of the environments from the Genesis Planet. Just from those there is a broad cross-section of the material used in the game and it looks great. The interface is simple with a slide up-or-down to view each of the simulation locations and clear buttons to press to collect items or upgrade. What more could you want when you've got some time to kill?

But there's also a whole ton of wrong in there too. For one thing this is one of the most repetitive Star Trek games out there. Ok, after a fair few years I finally departed from Timelines because it had just become too samey. The character options were becoming tenuous and my interest waned and died. It had the occasional facelift but there wasn't much new and no real reason to invest in the game to level up. The same is true here but after a lot shorter play time.

With Fleet Command the upgrades take an eternity but there is a lot to do and build plus there's the online aspect out battling on your ships. The Badgey Directive has absolutely none of this. Yes, you can upgrade the simulations but graphically there's not a lot that changes - a shuttle changes to a better model or the Klingons change from TNG to TOS versions - but that's it. At the core you still have to collect the resources to complete level goals and step up to the next chapter. 

And repeat.

At the moment for example I've got to a point where I'm working at getting 800 crew working at Chateau Picard. It requires a lot of funds - a vast amount of funds and an even longer amount of time to collect the required amount. I've automated everything so all I do is drop on to collect the Timed Crate reward and that's about it. If I get enough resources I might upgrade a character or simulation but that's only if and when I need to in line with the game goals.

Goals (which appear at the top of the game screen), might be to open up a new simulation, reach a certain number of crew overall or in one of the settings, it could just be to collect an amount of dilithium. In turn these provide access to chests and valuable items but also count toward the number of objectives needed to complete that specific chapter.

One of the side points to this mobile game is the regular events which tend to have some sort of Star Trek episodic theme to them but again, it's a variation on a very familiar theme. Indeed, that initial one or two simulation set up to get automated can be a right pain in the arse  as everything in the events is reset from the start. You can spend ten minutes just punching the collect button on the Shuttle Bay to be able to open up a second deck and then even longer to get characters to run them.

The frustrating thing is the time factor. There's a lot of doing nothing unless you pay for some upgrades, there's a lot of time spent watching adverts to get fund bonuses or dilithium bonuses and there's not much time actually playing the game. It seems to be one of those all or nothing play types where you have to invest a stupid amount of your life to get going and then the payoff is less than, ironically, rewarding.

The Badgey Directive looks nice and opening up the new locations on the holodecks is nifty. As I've just levelled up to Chapter 12 there's still a Risa, Q's Courtroom and Vulcan to unlock plus many of the 40 plus characters who can each help power those situations. Of the crew, there's the main four characters of Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford plus the senior staff of the USS Cerritos and various faces that have appeared through the first two seasons. Some you'll remember and others may take a while to recognise.

The game does include cut scenes with some form of story that links into the overall chapter title. Problem is that these are very quickly skippable and have absolutely zero bearing on anything that happens on the screen because each round/chapter is a rehack of the previous. Some of the levels are swapped in and out so in Chapter 12 there's no Cardassian Interrogation Room or Tropical Genesis Planet but apart from that there's no alteration to the basics of the gameplay because each simulation operates on the same principles - collect, automate, increase crew and upgrade.

The expansion opportunities too seem somewhat limited with only new environments and new characters being the big draw here. I'd struggle to suggest how else Eastside Games can stretch the concept. Already they're managed to link in Fair Haven and The Best of Both Worlds with the mini-events which has seen players collect everything from Borg Babies to Shamrocks.

Would I recommend this? Probably not unless you have a lot of time to waste and are prepared to wait a lifetime for any form of decent reward. It looks nice on the box with all of its little animations and things going on in the background but I just can't see this being a game with a great deal of shelf life on the mobile games stores - it doesn't keep your interest for long enough. 

Enjoyed this article? Why not like and share to spread the word!

Like our page on Facebook 

Follow us on Twitter

A Gem of a Game

Last year Genera brought us Star Trek: The Wrath of Gems and for a while I tootled along and played it a bit. 

Then both Trexels and lately Timelines took my Star Trek gaming attention elsewhere. Trexels fell by the wayside a little and then I pottered back in the last two weeks to Gems while still hammering the shuttle missions on Timelines to build up the crew stats. So why the heck am I bothering with something that is "just another columns game" after effectively giving up with it six months ago?

I'm not a sucker for punishment and totally go into playing Gems knowing that it's classic freemium material. The basic concept of the game is to align gems of different colours (red, orange, purple, blue, yellow and silver) to score points and use them in turn to damage your opponents and/or build up power for special abilities. Combining five or more activates some sort of super-bonus feature which is effectively game over for your opponent.

OK, it's really just another take on Tetris or that annoying candy game that seemingly everyone was playing about 18 months ago and in some respects its not too dissimilar to those pinball machines where they had the generic internals and slapped a franchise overlay on it.

There are two basic parts to the game. First there's a storyline which allows you to battle enemy characters or ships to gain points and level up characters to make conflicts easier. This takes place over a series of instalments gradually increasing in difficulty.

The second is a Versus mode in which you take on other players to win health packs, ship repair packs, character cards, ship cards, coins or dilithium which can be used to improve your chances both here and in the story mode. Within the Versus section you choose to enter a competition which might be under the header of a character (ie La Forge) or a ship (ie Negh'Var) with various rewards enroute to the Big Named Prize. These pretty much change each week or so and require some dedicated visits to climb the rankings, obliterate your peers and collect the rewards.

Now I stepped away last year while playing on my Android phone and recently switched over to iPhone. As part of the switch I chose to reinstall the game and see if anything had changed. Y'see I'd become rather bored with the whole thing. The characters were a bit dull and there didn't seem to be much draw as it became increasingly hard to level up my Worf and Data characters.

Gems focuses mainly on the characters and ships from The Next Generation and The Original Series be it the crews or alien races including the Klingons, Romulans, Anticans and a host of other Randoms introduced for the game. The same went for the ships as Birds-of-Prey, D7s and the Enterprise (original and D) warped in, each with its own quirks and special abilities to exploit. Thing is you tend to lean on particular characters and level them up and then rely on their gem characteristics forever more. For instance, Inagh, my choice Klingon uses the purple gems to kick out a phenomenal attack, my Spock uses (at present) the silver, yellow and orange crystals for a variety of actions.

However things have changed with the game now including character versions from The Next Generation movies and The Motion Picture plus ships from other spots in the franchise such as the Negh'Var from Deep Space Nine and very recently the Enterprise-A and the Romulan Scout. I would have liked the classic movie characters to have been decked out in their monster maroon outfits (any reason why?) but it has opened up more playability with the game. These new characters are stronger, have more powerful attacks and are rarer to win. I just feel sorry for Riker who appears to have put on about 10 stone when you compare his The Next Generation avatar to the one from the movies.

To be fair this could be any generic gem collecting game but giving it the Star Trek spin with ships and characters to collect and level up does work. I'm in no way saying that this is the most unique, amazing Star Trek experience ever - get Online or Timelines if you're searching for that kind of gaming - but it's certainly a great way to pass some time. The graphics and semi-cartoon style really work and I'd choose playing this just for the strategy element in preference to the Facebook Alien Domain any day. I actually think one of the reasons I didn't "get" this game is because some of the features are hidden away and I had to find them to understand why some of my versus battles were ending in utter disaster.

Y'see, it turns out that your crew (the ones who fight those clever little team battles) actually make a difference to the abilities of your ship when you assign them. It's taken me a fair few months to work that piece out and it's made a massive difference to playing the events. I actually stand a bit more of a chance now.

Gems has certainly kept me entertained as my Constitution Class USS Enterprise takes a pummelling from other Enterprise's, Birds of Prey and the occasional D7. The Star Trek thing may just be a nice overlay but seeing the ships in action is oddly satisfying but not perhaps on the level you might be expecting in Timelines. What is nice is that between all the various games that are available just on the mobile platform, there is a very impressive degree of differences - puzzles, action, adventure, story, starship battles - and all with their merits whether as long term time or money "investments" for fans.

Definitely one for enjoyment rather than faithful immersion. The touches are there but it can feel like a cash in at times. For me the choice to return to Gems might be the Star Trek overlay but it's also something that's kept the grey cells ticking over and definitely entertained. Look past that glossy and its a game that will keep you entertained or at the least fill a spare five minutes.


Have you indulged in the Gems? Casual timeout or something more?

You can find out more about the game, competitions and lots of other bits by visiting the official site HERE from which you can also download it!

Live on YouTube
Like our page on Facebook 

Follow us on Twitter

+1 us on Google+

Add us on Tumblr

Join the conversation on Star Trek: Risa