Guide
Starship captain games in VR: what's out there and where IKAREE fits
Virtual reality is the closest most of us will get to a starship bridge. A handful of VR games let you sit in one, and they are surprisingly different from each other. Here is a short map of the genre.
Co-operative bridge crews
Some games split the bridge into stations, helm, tactical, engineering and command, and give each to a different player. The best-known example is Star Trek: Bridge Crew (Ubisoft, 2017), built around teamwork and talking to other people over voice chat. It is at its best with a full group of friends.
Space flight simulators
Games such as Elite Dangerous put you in the pilot's seat of your own ship in a huge simulated galaxy, with trading, combat and exploration. You fly the ship yourself, often with a joystick or HOTAS, and the cockpit is your world.
Dogfighting
Star Wars: Squadrons (EA, 2020) is a fighter-cockpit game focused on fast space combat, playable in VR on PC and PlayStation VR.
Exploration sandboxes
No Man's Sky supports VR and lets you land on procedurally generated planets and walk around on them.
Where IKAREE fits: command, not piloting
IKAREE is a single-player game about being the captain rather than the pilot. You don't fly the ship with a stick and you don't need other players. You speak, and a crew of six AI-driven officers answers, advises, argues and does the work. The stories are episodes built around hard choices rather than missions to win, and the galaxy outside is the real one: about 11,000 real stars and their known exoplanets.
| IKAREE | Co-op bridge games | Flight sims | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You are | The captain | One station of the crew | The pilot |
| Other players | Not needed | Best with a full crew | Optional |
| Controls | Your voice | Controllers and voice chat | Controllers or HOTAS |
| Movement | Seated, no locomotion | Seated | Seated, ship motion |
| Stories | Moral dilemmas with several endings | Missions | Open world |
If you love these games, you may enjoy the quieter, talkative side of the captain's chair. If you want to fly and fight with friends, the others will suit you better. Many players will want both.
Game names are trademarks of their owners and are used here only to describe the genre. IKAREE is not affiliated with any of them.