The Captain is Dead, a Star Trek parody tabletop game, was recently adapted into a co-op video game and wound up looking a lot like the game FTL.

The red alert alarms are blaring, the aliens are breaking throughthe hull, and the vessel's starship captain is too busy being deceased to give heroic orders: this is the premise of The Captain Is Dead, a cooperative tabletop board game and Star Trek parody recently adapted into a multiplayer video game by Thunderbox Entertainment.This board game adaptation studio has nicelyaugmentedthe The Captain Is Dead's frantic countdown-styled gameplay with surreal polygonal graphics and a gameplay mode similar in style to the spaceship roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light.

As one of the most iconic, genre-defining science fiction tv franchises out there, Star Trek has gotten its fair share of spin-offs and homages, from parody movies like Galaxy Quest and deconstructive novels like John Scalzi's Redshirts to video gamessuch as Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulatorwhichlet players take on the roles ofofficers controlling the bridge stations aboard an Enterprise-like starship. The Captain Is Dead (both board and video game) recreates the climactic sequences inStar Trek episodes where the main characters must use science and teamwork to resolve the crisis at hand without the help of their brave, charismatic starship captain... who is dead.

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The original The Captain is Deadis a self-described"Retro Sci-Fi Survival Strategy" board game with cards, plastic tokens, anda board with a map of a starship's various decks. Each player picks arole card that matches a specific spaceship crew archetype (Science Officer, Telepath, Chief Engineer, Cyborg, Counselor, Hologram, etc.), and races around the map of their damaged spaceship to complete various tasks (with comedic hijinks similar to the antics in Star Trek: Lower Decks).

As a co-operative board game, players of The Captain is Deadare working together against the cards drawn from the game's Yellow, Orange, and Red Alert Card decks, which contain random scenarios such as alien attackers or spatial anomalies which obstruct the crew's activities and drain power from the ship's shields. When the ship's shield power reaches zero, it explodes. When the Jump Core is fully charged, the starship can make an FTL hop to safety.

The official trailer for the video game adaptation ofThe Captain Is Dead, released byThunderbox Entertainment, parodies promotional videos from the 1980s withdetails such as VCR static, mullet-wearing hackers, and a cheery old British narrator who talks about the game's "b**ching synth soundtrack," the company's "laser-powered but totally harmless board game zapping digitizer" whichis probably a shout-out to Tron. The video game itself parodies the various Star Trek installments and the sci-fi stylings of the 1960s/1980sby employing the following designfeatures.

The 3D graphics for The Captain Is Dead can't exactly be described as "AAA". The character models, like the boxy-looking starship are crude-looking and polygonal, shaded using eye-popping primary colors. These textures hearken back to the graphics of 1980s/1990s space video games like Battlezone,Elite or Descent,but they alsoperfectly mimic the art style of the original board game: sharp, angular, cubist, and vaguely reminiscent of the uniforms and spaceship corridors of the original 1960sStar Trek series.

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How The Captain Is Dead Adapted Its Star Trek Parody Board Game For PC - Screen Rant