Tie-in video games get a bum rap. Often, deservedly so. They could be wonderful, however too often they’re rushed efforts that appear developed simply to make a buck off followers. Some don’t even coalesce with the canon of the franchise they’ve allegedly been created to increase upon. (Don’t neglect the infamous E.T. title, which was not solely one of many worst video video games of all time but additionally so poorly acquired that many cartridges have been buried in a landfill.)

Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova breaks this curse.

Set between the primary and second half of Star Trek: Prodigy‘s premiere season, the franchise’s all-ages animated sequence, Supernova succeeds the place so many others failed. It’s acquired strong sport mechanics (save for some barely irritating digital camera controls) and incredible characters (a lot of them voiced by their TV counterparts), and it truly looks like a narrative arc that would occur on Prodigy itself. You don’t must play it to understand the present, however you may respect the present extra in case you do.

Believe me once I say I used to be not anticipating to kind any of this. Just figuring out it was a tie-in sport had my hopes about as excessive as a tribble’s butt. Visions of Street Fighter: The Movie (the sport) and Raiders of the Lost Ark for Atari 2600 nonetheless hang-out me. But it was so effectively finished, I felt compelled to speak to the individuals who made it. Turns out they knew the low expectations they have been up in opposition to however got the instruments wanted to beat them.

“It’s very rare for a game to tie in to a TV show or a movie to have the level of support that we had,” Martin Korda, a script author for Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova, instructed me. “We were given the scripts for all the episodes.”

In addition to scouring these scripts, Korda additionally labored with Lisa Boyd, one of many present’s writers, to ensure the sport’s story would jive with the general Prodigy universe. According to Boyd, he nailed it. “It was presented to me as already a very authentic Star Trek story,” she says, “I didn’t really need to do much except have Dal and Gwyn flirt a little more.”

But certainly it takes greater than romance beneath decks, proper? To hear Supernova producer Rudy Lamy inform it, sure. Star Trek has an enormous, decades-long canon—and the form of detail-oriented followers who have a tendency to note when issues created to play of their universe don’t match. So it was on the sport’s creators to ensure not simply the story, however all of the little particulars—the issues that make a tie-in sport tie in with stuff—labored too. Everything from creating significant collectibles to giving achievements names that made sense in-universe was honest sport.

“[We contacted] dozens of people, working multiple times a week with [Prodigy networks] Nickelodeon and Paramount+ to get things right, to make sure the gameplay fit,” Lamy says. The crew additionally paid particular consideration to the viewers of Star Trek: Prodigy. They needed the sport to a have an attraction much like the present’s, making it pleasurable for adults and youngsters alike.

Those particulars could appear trivial, however they’re not—they usually guarantee Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova stays out of the trash for good.