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Watch trailer on Steam ↗CGA Trek
Classyk Games · Published by Classyk Games
Positive — 100% positive (11 reviews)
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
Cyan Alert! Set your eyeballs on stunned because it's time for CGA Trek! Your continuing mission is to seek out and destroy an invading fleet of warships in this modern homage to the classic turn-based strategy "Trek" game that originated on mainframe computers in the 1970s.
£3.39
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Price history
Action, Adventure, Indie, Strategy · 2025 · More under £5 games
Embark on a mission of destruction and survival as CGA Trek pits you against an alien fleet. Use strategic thinking and tactical maneuvers in this modern twist on classic turn-based gameplay.
About this game
Praise for CGA Trek
"An absolute masterpiece... I hate to say it may be the best thing you've ever done" -- SpaceGameJunkie
"Pure fun, that's gold these days" -- fernadolv3
"wow, the dialog, this is amazing, way beyond expectations" -- best luke
Introduction
Cyan Alert! Set your eyeballs on stunned because it's time for CGA Trek!
CGA Trek is a homage to the "Trek" game (sometimes known as Star Trek, Super Star Trek, Space War or Starkill) that originated on mainframe computers in the 1970s, inspired by the innovative PC version from the late 1980s called EGA Trek. Like Riker and his transporter clone Thomas, or Tuvix, it is simultaneously a demake and remake.
It aims to be a faithful recreation of the basic gameplay but in a modern, accessible, fun package. I wanted something with strong art direction so I picked the austere and beautiful 4-colour CGA palette of early 1980s computing.
Features
Your very own starship equipped with many systems, including teletransmatporters.
The alpha quadrant as an 8x8 grid containing 64 sectors.
Each sector is an 8x8 grid of locations
Starbases (general, research and weapon depots)
Planets (with away missions)
Enemy ships
A scenario designer with five difficulty settings
Authentic 1980s computer voice
Great 8bit music
Beautiful, beautiful CGA graphics - 4 colours - using the light magenta/light cyan palette at 320x200 resolution.
A bunch of surprises for fans of the genre.
Let me know in the Steam forum if there are any accessibility tweaks I can provide to make this a great experience for you.
History
In 1971, Mike Mayfield wrote the game "Star Trek" for his local university's computer on punch tape. The game was designed to be played via a printer instead of screen.
In the 1970s, with no hard drives or floppy discs, code was often distributed in magazines and other publications. Hobbyists would read the code off paper and type it into their computer to play it.
It was this way that the code for "Star Trek" spread quickly in the computer world with variations and implementations popping up all over the place. One programmer wrote in the introduction to their version that "there have probably been more versions of this game written than any other as there is probably at least one version around for every type of computer ever made."
While the owners of the original 1960s Star Trek show gave written permission for those fan games to use elements of the TV series well into the 1970s (a decade when Star Trek was kept alive by the growing fandom) by the 1980s they appeared to have reduced this support. Jerry Pournelle (co-author of the excellent book The Mote In God's Eye - apparently also a computer nerd!) wrote in 1984 that his version of the game was renamed Star Kill after they "received a polite but insistent letter". (He also praised a variant of the game called "Star Fleet I", the sequel to which is available on Steam and is still being updated this this day).
Originally written in Sigma 7 BASIC, Trek was rewritten in many other dialects of BASIC such as HP BASIC and other languages such as FORTRAN.
It was a FORTRAN version of "Star Trek" that inspired Nels Anderson to write a version for the PC in around 1989. He upgraded the plain ASCII graphics to take advantage of new 16 colour hardware made by IBM called the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA). EGA was a big upgrade over IBM's earlier Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) which effectively* did 4 colours.
The Anderson version of the game was titled "EGA Trek" and spread worldwide in the early 1990s as a great example of shareware. EGA Trek is often regarded as the best version of the genre.
While EGA was a big technological upgrade over CGA at the time, in some ways CGA has aged better. Its "weird" colour restrictions have given it a lot of personality compared to the more "normal" palettes of EGA. Additionally, the greater restrictions of CGA (fewer colours, lower resolution) can provide a lot of fun to game developers looking for a challenge. I hope you enjoy CGA Trek.
With massive apologies and much love to Nels Anderson.
* the actual colour capabilities of CGA and EGA are too complicated to fully summarise here but are popularly considered to be 4 vs 16 colours.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: 2+ Cores, 2+ GHz
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: 2 GB VRAM, Vulkan 1.0 compatible hardware
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Recommended
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 5 or better
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: 4 GB VRAM, NVIDIA GTX 970 or better
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Supported Languages
*languages with full audio support
Latest news
Patch NotesOfficial
Update notes for 16 March 2026
Hi everyone,It's been a rough week for me. So I thought I'd cheer myself up by doing a new release for CGA TREK! A lot of these changes have soft launched over the last few months but I thought it would be a good time to bundle them up into an official release.The two big additions to the game this release are gamepad support and wormholes. Full changelog below.Accessibility in software is a major motivator for me. I firmly believe "people don't have accessibility problems, software has accessibility problems". That's been an interesting task for CGA Trek because I really wanted to hearken back to the original gameplay of the other Treks -- mostly that means that beautiful 8x8 grid. Is it an input design we would use today? Not really. We're more likely to let the player select the square they want to move to directly rather than making them select a number on an axis and then a number on another axis! But I think the 8x8 grid is still really playable with gamepad/arrow keys so I'm pleased with how it worked out. I can finally play CGA Trek on my couch.I also knew I wanted to add wormholes to CGA Trek at some point. A lot of the Trek-likes contain wormholes or blackholes. They do different things but often they really unbalance the game. My main desire was to make sure they added to the gameplay in an interesting way - either tactically or strategically. For this first iteration, I have settled on a basic version that slightly changes strategy. Wormholes catapult you to the other side of the map at no cost. It opens up a few interesting choices for searching the galaxy for enemies. They also cycle the palette which is kind of fun but also a bit annoying so there is an option to turn it off in the settings!I can never promise updates but I'd love to buff stars and wormholes tactically. It would be really cool if they absorbed torpedoes or phasers and then did something unpredictable! I also would love to do more away missions. Ahhhh so much to do.Also, check out my o...Read full article on Community Announcements (dodgyville)Patch NotesOfficial
Update notes for 9 Jan 2026
Hi everyone,Welcome to another big update for CGA Trek. I'm in no hurry to implement every feature every Trek-like game has ever had but as I play CGA Trek I'm enjoying adding stuff that I am certain improves the feel of the game. Most of these changes have already gone live over the last month but I'm batching the news in one big news item.The big changes since the last update are:Enemy wessels now reinforce from neighbouring sectors. This makes it important to pay attention to the surrounding sectors when you pick a battlefield as what appears to be an easy kill can suddenly become a lot more complicated! As well as adding a bit of strategic decision making to your play, it also alters the tactical situation. All up I'm VERY happy with this feature (and also I think it looks so cute when they warp in).I've reworked how energy usage is calculated (eg by warp engines, shields and the energy converter). This enables me to balance the game a lot better. The daily energy use is now displayed at the top of the screen. To keep the UI clean I created a custom 4px tall typeface called CGA Luke 4px Regular just for this game that I'm also making freely available under the Creative Commons.Players can now partially repair a system. With the addition of time limits last update, it became a lot more interesting to have this feature in the game, a staple of Trek-likes like WinTrek. It lets powerful players really eke out a bit more time during their runs.LOTS more (see below)I am massively unable to get the word out about my Classyk games. CGA Trek is sitting on 6 reviews. Liberation is on 20 reviews. Cell Sword is on 5 reviews, Alexander the Great had conquered a quarter of the world's population by the time he was 32 and here I am hounding strangers for Steam reviews and wishlists. There is no dignity in art but I love it anyway. I will get better at promotion, I promise!So far the "heat" for my next game, Low Earth Orbit Adventures, is also low temperature (near absolute zer...Read full article on Community Announcements (dodgyville)AnnouncementsOfficial
Updates notes for 23 Nov 2025
Hi everyone,Welcome to the first post-release update for CGA Trek. CGA Trek is my small fast-paced version of a classic "Trek" game. It's not meant to be the definitive space game with every single feature known to humanity but I do want to add stuff that makes the game fun and interesting. There is a bunch of new stuff but the two big items this release are:ShieldsMore CGA. Yes, MORE!ShieldsI was happy with the first version of CGA Trek BUT every time I went into battle I was itching to raise shields. Shields are such an integral part of Star Trek (the show) and Trek games so it was my number one feature. But I don't want to add stuff unless it improves the game. In CGA Trek when you raise your shields it gives you a barrier around your ship that the enemies can chip away at. I think it really gives the player more options for tactics.Starboard shields failing? Swing round and let your port shields take some damage. Or warp in with shields raised, take heavy fire, let off a volley of torpedoes and then warp the kirk out! It just adds a bit more depth to the game. I got down to 8 energy at one point (sweating).More CGACGA was a type of graphics card from the early 1980s. It was commonly used to display four colours on the screen at once but it actually 16 colours. However, a programmer couldn't pick ANY four of the 16, it had to be from a limited number of preselected palettes. The first version of CGA Trek used the "magenta high" palette (magenta, cyan, white and black) but with this version you can switch to the other palettes. I have also added contrast, brightness and saturation sliders. This gives everyone much more control of what appears on the screen without losing the essential authentic CGA feel.Time LimitsAnother big gameplay change is that on harder modes there is now a time limit. This is direct from the older Trek games and just adds a bit of spice to the gameplay. It encourages players to warp at higher speeds and spend more time in battles between vi...Read full article on Community Announcements (dodgyville)
