The test was never about winning.
Starfleet Academy's most feared exam drops a command cadet into an impossible choice. The civilian fuel freighter Kobayashi Maru has struck a gravitic mine inside the Klingon Neutral Zone. She has lost power, her hull is breached, and 381 people are aboard with life support failing. Crossing the line breaks the treaty and invites war. Staying out leaves them to die.
You get one night to prepare, and one morning in the chair.
Act I: The Night Before
Walk your Academy dorm with three blocks of time to spend:
- Study tactics: sharper scan reads, and the old corbomite bluff.
- Rest: steadier nerves when the bridge starts to panic.
- Rally your crew over the intercom, so they trust you when you overrule them.
- Find the cadet who wrote the test. Ellery has a warning: "the scenario cheats."
- Sneak into the simulator lab. Slip past the security cadet and rewrite the simulator core. Every patch breaks one rule of the test, and every patch leaves a trace.
Act II: The Test
Sit in the captain's chair on a round 1960s training bridge. Each beat, your six cadet officers report, advise, argue and sometimes lose their nerve. You give the orders, and every one shows its cost before you commit:
stay out · request Starfleet orders · scan · hail the freighter · hail the Klingons · cross the line · raise or drop shields · divert power · tractor · beam survivors · fight · bluff · flee · surrender · ram · self-destruct · abandon ship · overrule an officer
Every choice moves something you can see: the life-support clock, distance to the Zone, shields, hull and power, crew morale and trust, survivors aboard, Klingon alert, treaty standing. Is the distress call even real? Then the battle cruisers decloak, and they keep coming.
Act III: The Debrief
Commander Hale grades you from the observation gallery on six virtues: judgement, compassion, courage, respect for law, care of the crew and honesty. Every mark names the decision that earned it. There are 16 endings, from By the Book and The Bureaucrat to Losing Well, Saw the Trap, Mutiny and Went Down With Her.
There is only one way to save everyone, and you would have had to cheat the night before. If you did, Hale will ask whether you cheated. Choose your answer carefully.
Controls
- Mouse: look around the bridge. Turning to a station focuses that officer.
- Click or 1–9: give an order.
- WASD: walk at night. Crouch: sneak. Interact: use desks, doors and terminals.
Built in Zero. The procedural models stand in for generated ones (see design/RETROSPECTIVE.md).
Comments · 0
Open discussion, no rating attached. Ask questions, swap notes, follow threads.