Star Trek Is Officially Switching Genre In 2027

Published Sep 1, 2026, 12:00 AM EDT

Nicholas Becher is a gaming journalist with an MFA in Creative Writing from FAU. With extensive experience playing video games, he covers all forms of gaming content at Screen Rant, from breaking news to the latest fan theories. Most-played games range from Clair Obscur to Civ to Elden Ring to Halo 2 and beyond. 

Star Trek is officially celebrating its 60th anniversary this year in spectacular fashion, marking six decades since The Original Series first boldly went where no television franchise had gone before. While it remains one of the defining pillars of science fiction, Star Trek's longevity has always depended on its ability to venture well beyond straightforward stories about spaceships, aliens, and futuristic technology.

Across its many television incarnations, Star Trek has regularly reinvented itself by venturing into different genres, from the political drama and wartime storytelling of Deep Space Nine to the mystery and serialized adventure of Discovery. The Next Generation frequently embraced elements of courtroom drama and even philosophy, while Voyager leaned into survival stories and the challenges of an isolated crew trying to find its way home.

More recent shows have stretched the formula even further, with Lower Decks delivering animated workplace comedy, Picard incorporating conspiracy and character drama, and Strange New Worlds experimenting with everything from romance to musicals and even to puppets. However, Star Trek is about to return in 2027 with yet another brand-new release that delves into the genre of survival-horror like we've never seen.

Star Trek Goes Full Horror Mode In 2027

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Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is an exciting upcoming release taking the franchise straight into the survival horror genre. Developed by Bloober Team and published by Paramount Games, the upcoming third-person action-adventure stars former Lieutenant Ro Laren, once again voiced by Michelle Forbes, after she crash-lands on a distant planet consumed by a mysterious hive mind.

Rather than focusing primarily on space combat or traditional sci-fi exploration, Shadow Frontier places Ro in a hostile environment filled with grotesque creatures, environmental dangers, disturbing visions, and a force attempting to invade and absorb her consciousness. Players will have 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.

Bloober describes the game as a mature psychological adventure built around exploration, combat, and survival, but the horror vibes are sure to terrify players in ways the franchise hasn't done since some of Star Trek's darkest Borg and body-horror episodes.

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier Is A Bold New Direction For The Franchise

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier feels like a genuinely bold new direction for the franchise, reframing one of the franchise's most iconic concepts through the lens of survival horror. The series has certainly 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. But Shadow Frontier promises to take things up a notch and will hopefully distinguish itself from the franchise's more traditional exploration-focused games and give us some major suspense.

It also feels like a natural extension of how flexible Star Trek has become in recent years. Shows like Strange New Worlds have demonstrated that the franchise can move between comedy, musicals, horror, romance, and even puppetry without losing its core identity. Shadow Frontier leans into that flexibility and will hopefully prove that Star Trek can support a genuinely frightening survival experience and not rely so heavily on its callbacks to familiar technology, characters, and tropes from other entries.