Lunar Strike offers a pessimistic, and worryingly realistic look at the future of space travel

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It's impossible not to be optimistic about our future among the stars at the moment. The Artemis 2 mission just blasted four astronauts in a loop around the moon, taking humanity one step closer to once again setting foot on our natural satellite.

But, ironically, NASA's achievement doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it’s time for a reality check. As rocket launches become more common, and the goal shifts away from exploration for the good of humanity towards exploitation for the profit of billionaires, interest and excitement around spaceflight is waning.

That's the cold future that the upcoming space game "Lunar Strike" presents. Cognition, the developers behind the game, gave us a sneak peek into the lore and backstory of their upcoming narrative-driven adventure, which sees you step into the boots of a junior archivist sent to document humanity's final lunar settlement.

Set in the year 2119, Lunar Strike imagines a world where humanity's reach for the stars fizzled out with a whimper, as problems at home forced us to refocus our efforts. Global warming led to international tensions, and a mixture of religious fanaticism and failures in governance gave way to nuclear annihilation. Suffice to say, this string of disasters left humanity risk-averse. As an in-universe essay notes, "humanity recoiled and retrenched and withdrew and atrophied".

It's a strangely pragmatic look forward that we rarely see in games. Sure, sci-fi can be bleak — there's no end to the cosmic horrors and savage alien races that game developers can conjure up — but that almost always comes as a result of humanity's success in space. We get to reach for the stars, develop faster-than-light travel, and explore the cosmos … and then run into extraterrestrial nasties.

Despite being set on the moon, Lunar Strike offers problems entirely of our own Earthly creation, and the only solutions are those within our current understanding of science. Given that it's set nearly 100 years in the future, we've made some progress, though, including a lunar base at the moon's south pole.

The lunar south pole is the intended landing sight for Artemis 4, and for good reason. "It offers access to some of the moon's oldest terrain, as well as cold, shadowed regions that may contain water and other compounds," Artemis lunar science lead Sarah Noble said in a 2024 press release.

With a century to build on our real plans, this settlement will be much more than a few prefabricated habitats, though, with the developers striving to make it feel like a real, lived-in space. We often romanticize our future amongst the stars, but Lunar Strike aims to put the reality of that struggle at the forefront. As humanity's interest in lunar exploration has faded, the moon base has succumbed to the ravages of time. Parts have to be repaired and reused. Maintenance and vigilance are a daily reality for the residents. Some people spend their entire lives on the moon; some people are born on the moon, spending their entire lives inside pressurised corridors, under artificial lights.

It's a far cry from the pomp and circumstance of the Artemis 2 mission and NASA's dreams for sustained, peaceful lunar habitation under the Artemis Accords. A world where our past accomplishments and discoveries are being forgotten, cast aside as survival and pragmatism become the priority. But out of this bleak future, a small light emerges in the form of the ARCK project.

Named for the real-life non-profit founded by Cognition's director, Brian Pope, this fictional organisation has the same mandate as its namesake: to preserve humanity's history. As the developer puts it, "Its mission is to collect and preserve scientific research, technical documentation, cultural records, and traces of everyday human life - not as a retrospective archive, but as a living system that must be maintained, curated, and defended."

And that's where we'll come in as players. As a junior archivist on the moon, our job is to scan, document, and preserve the knowledge and history of humanity's time on the moon … Well, it is when we're not also trying to prevent a terrorist attack, anyway.

Economic and ecological strain have left the public with a cold attitude towards space travel, and in some cases, that disapproval has grown into outright opposition. Earth-first movements have sprung up, and while most are purely political organisations, some have taken to more … extreme measures. One such extremist offshoot — known as the MudBoots — serves as the antagonist during the game. While we can't spoil their plans for you yet, it's ambitious and potentially devastating for the lunar base.

It's not all doom and gloom, though, as Lunar Strike does offer some optimistic looks at how we deal with technological advancement — specifically AI. With the current wave of AI automation, and the real-life discussions around automating the settlement of our solar system, it would seem logical to extrapolate out a future where computers and robots are running the show, but this isn't the case in Lunar Strike. As the devs explain, "AI does not run the colony. It supports the person standing inside it".

We've still yet to get our hands on the game, but we're excited to explore the world of Lunar Strike more as the launch approaches. There is no locked release date yet beyond 2026, but when we know more, you'll know more.

Lunar Strike is coming soon to PC. You can add it to your wishlist on Steam.