The Captain

The Captain casts you as Thomas Welmu, a Spacefleet science officer stranded on the other side of the galaxy. Dark forces are en route to Earth, you carry the only thing that can stop them, and you have to race home across the galaxy making one consequential choice after another along the way.

You plot every leg of the journey: shortest route home or detour through an experimental wormhole; chase a distant distress signal or earn money to upgrade your engine. New worlds bring their own dilemmas (interfering with pre-space civilizations, uncovering covert military secrets, deciding whether a dying life-form's brain gets returned to its people or harvested for ship upgrades). Combat ranges from Type 2 Vacuum Rockets and Plasma Guns to slipping past entirely.

Friends collected on the journey become enemies if you betray them. Sacrifice a friend for the greater good, rat out an undercover cop for a faster route, keep a life-changing truth from someone to keep them around. The result is a story-driven trip where you cannot save everyone, and which civilizations you save or destroy is genuinely up to you.