Frequently asked questions about IKAREE

IKAREE is a seated virtual reality game for Meta Quest 3, Quest 3S and PC VR. You are the captain of the deep-space explorer IKAREE. You give orders out loud, and an AI-driven bridge crew of six officers answers, advises, argues and carries them out, among about 11,000 real stars of the Milky Way.

No. IKAREE is an original game with its own ship, crew, species and story. It is inspired by the optimistic starship television of the 1990s: a captain, a bridge, a crew who argue honestly, and stories built around a hard choice. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Star Trek franchise or its owners.

You sit in the captain's chair and run the ship by voice: set a course, go to warp, scan a planet, launch a survey probe, hail another ship, call red alert, raise shields, manoeuvre or ask your officers for advice. In story episodes something happens on routine duty, and you decide whether to respond and how. Between episodes you can explore the galaxy freely.

A Season 1 episode takes about 25 to 35 minutes. Each one has several endings, and your crew remembers what you chose.

Yes. The sky is built from the HYG star catalogue and the NASA Exoplanet Archive: about 11,000 real stars and their confirmed exoplanets, set against the NASA Deep Star Maps sky. 31 famous destinations, from Mars and Europa to Proxima Centauri b and TRAPPIST-1e, are modelled in detail. The surfaces of exoplanets are artist impressions, because no real images of them exist yet.

Season 1 has six story episodes today. About 100 missions are planned, spread across the whole galaxy, and new ones arrive with Early Access updates.

Yes, that is the plan. A mission in IKAREE is a single data file, not code: you describe the situation, what can be discovered, the choice and the endings, and a validator checks it before anyone plays it. Creator tools for players are in development. The goal is that your story and your ship then live on in the galaxy, and other captains can meet them.

The Planetary Union is the coalition the IKAREE serves: five member species (Humans, Vaelori, Oruun, Khurgani and the Hallowed), founded by the Charter of Tycho in 2203. Beyond its borders are the Sarrakh Hegemony, the nomadic Skeyr, the Lumen, the mysterious Custodians and the pre-warp Tavari.

Hold the communicator button and speak naturally, the way you would on a real bridge. There is no list of keywords to learn. Your speech is turned into text, the crew's reply is written by an AI language model that knows the state of the ship and the story, and the officer answers in their own voice.

Yes. The six bridge officers are AI-driven characters with written personalities, histories and relationships. Their dialogue is generated live, so they respond to what you actually say. They are fictional characters, not real people.

The crew speaks English. Voice commands work in English, and Czech commands are recognised too. Subtitles are available in English, with Czech as an option.

Yes. The crew's voices and replies are generated by AI services on the game's servers, so you need an internet connection and a microphone. Your headset's built-in microphone works.

Basic commands are also available on the armrest panels of the captain's chair, which you can touch or point at. The heart of the game, talking to your crew, needs your voice.

IKAREE is designed for comfort. You stay seated in the captain's chair the whole time and there is no artificial walking or turning. The ship moves on the viewscreen and outside the windows, not under you.

No. IKAREE avoids teleport locomotion completely. Seated, you stay in the captain’s chair and the ship moves outside the windows. In the upcoming Live mode you walk on your own feet, and the turbolift takes you between decks with light and sound while the floor stays still.

Live mode, now in development, turns your room into a deck of the IKAREE. You stand up from your real chair and walk on a platform around it: 4 × 3 m in a large room, 2.4 × 1.9 m in a compact one. A turbolift in the corner takes you to eight decks, from the bridge to engineering, sickbay, the hangar and the crew lounge. With a stationary boundary you can still play everything seated.

Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S, natively on the headset. PC VR on Windows through Air Link, Link cable or OpenXR.

No. Seated, a chair is all you need. Live mode, in development, will use more room if you have it: a free area of about 4.6 × 3.6 m for the full platform, or 3 × 2.5 m for the compact one.

IKAREE is in Early Access on the Meta Horizon Store. The public store page opens soon; this site will link to it as soon as it is live.

The bridge, the crew and Season 1 are playable now, and the game keeps growing with regular updates. Player feedback shapes what comes next.

Pricing is set on the Meta Horizon Store. The game offers a subscription and a Weekend Pass; payments are handled entirely by Meta.

IKAREE is made by Lubomír Budin (ProBudin), an independent developer in Brno, Czech Republic.