Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator gives you and your friends separate stations aboard one starship, then asks you to make them work as a crew. Helm steers, Weapons handles shields and armaments, Science tracks the wider map, Engineering balances power, and Communications manages messages and support from nearby ships and stations. The Captain has no console; they connect the information coming from the crew and decide where the ship goes next. A ship can take two to eleven players depending on its type, and the game is built around a group sharing one bridge rather than a solo campaign.
One ship, several kinds of information
Each station gives its player a different slice of the situation. At Helm, you set a heading, adjust impulse or warp, and bring the ship around toward a target. Weapons chooses what to fire and helps manage shields. Science scans contacts and reveals which ships are friendly, hostile, or worth investigating. Engineering shifts power toward whichever systems need it, from propulsion to sensors and weapons. Communications can hail vessels and stations, receive requests, call for surrenders, or direct friendly ships.
No one console is the whole bridge. A Science officer may see an enemy’s weak point while Helm is lining up an approach; Weapons needs that information to choose a target, and Engineering may need to move power toward the systems about to be used. Meanwhile, a message from a station can add another objective, or a friendly ship can need a change of course. The Captain sees enough to direct the larger picture, but the stations’ details still have to reach them through the crew. That division of information is the main cooperative mechanic: what one player notices can change what the rest of the bridge does.
The work changes with what is happening. While crossing a quiet sector, Helm can handle navigation as Science checks distant contacts and Communications listens for messages. Once hostile ships arrive, the crew has to make quicker decisions about heading, shields, weapon systems, and power. During another stretch, the ship may be low on supplies or need to guide a friendly transport around a hazard. None of these tasks is individually complicated, but their timing and overlap create the pressure: changing course can expose a weaker shield, firing can consume an ammunition type you may want later, and shifting power can leave another system short.
A Captain is a distinct social role, not another menu of buttons. The Captain can keep the current destination and threat in view, translate reports into priorities, and call out orders while everyone else uses a focused interface. If your group is smaller, two players can start a ship by taking Helm and Weapons. That leaves several other jobs uncovered, so the bridge can operate with a compact crew but won’t have the same spread of station attention as a fuller roster. A standard ship has room for five bridge officers alongside the Captain; carrier ships can add fighter pilots, bringing the full crew to eleven.
A mission is a shared problem, not a shared skill tree
The ordinary run is built from a sector of space populated with threats, stations, friendly vessels, and points of interest. You can fly to a station, dock for supplies, investigate unusual sensor readings, respond to requests, and fight enemy ships. The host can shape a session through ship, mode, and difficulty settings. The result is a string of local decisions rather than a scripted story campaign: the bridge’s immediate task comes from the encounters and settings in the current game.
Artemis also includes Mission Mode for scripted objectives. These missions define their own challenge, so the crew may be working toward a particular goal instead of simply moving through a configurable sector. A mission can add context, conditions, or a sequence of events; the game also supports scripts that let a separate Game Master react to what players do. The built-in Three Bases module is one example. That flexibility gives a group more structure than a plain enemy encounter, while custom missions and Game Master play depend on extra mission files and instructions. The game does not present those as a conventional branching campaign with persistent character levels or equipment to carry forward.
For crews using more than one ship, the task can expand from a single bridge to a fleet. Several human-controlled ships can share a map, and cooperative modes let separate crews face common threats. One ship can be defending a station while another engages enemy vessels; communications between ships and the shared map help the groups coordinate. In Elite Co-op, you win by destroying all enemies and lose if all four stations under attack are destroyed. The host can also tune enemy difficulty. A map can support up to eight player-controlled ships, making fleet play a fit for a larger meetup with enough people to staff more than one bridge.
Cooperative setups give the crew a common objective, while competitive configurations put player-controlled ships or crews against one another. Multiplayer therefore spans both shared bridge-team missions and opposing-crew play.
The bridge is the activity
Artemis is deliberately more about communication than individual dexterity. The controls are mostly screens, indicators, buttons, and sliders rather than action-game combos. A Science player relaying a bearing, an Engineer calling out low power, or a Communications officer reporting a station’s request can each give the Captain a piece of the next decision. When a callout arrives late or two people are acting on different information, the ship may turn the wrong way or arrive at a fight without the system it needs. The experience comes from coordinating these small jobs across a shared objective.
That also makes the group size matter in a way it does not in many co-op shooters. With a bigger crew, each person can stay focused on one station and the Captain can coordinate several reports. With fewer people, the ship has fewer dedicated eyes and hands, even though two players can begin. Players can switch or cover more than one station in some setups, but that changes the attention available to each task. The two-to-eleven range reflects different ship configurations: not every mission uses eleven separate jobs, and every group size has a different spread of responsibilities.
Your screen is usually a functional station interface, not a cinematic view of characters running through a ship. Helm’s navigation display, Science’s contact map, Engineering’s system readouts, and Communications’ message list each put different information in front of a player. The main view screen shows the wider scene, but many decisions still come from reading the station display and talking. If your friends want a fast action game where each player sees the whole battlefield, Artemis has a different rhythm; if they want to role-play a crew through instruments and reports, that division is the point.
The setting supports that bridge-room feel with alien fleets, space stations, strange sensor readings, nebulae, asteroids, and other hazards. Encounters can shift from a request for supplies to an enemy ship closing in, or from a routine scan to an unexpected threat on the map. The interface is technical and the ship models are simple, so the atmosphere comes less from elaborate cutscenes than from the information arriving at different consoles and what the crew makes of it. A sensor contact means something different to Science than a torpedo warning does to Weapons, and the Captain is constantly pulling those views together.
More variety, with a setup trade-off
The game has room for experimentation through ship types, mission settings, difficulty, and custom scripts. The host can adjust session settings, while different vessels change the tools available to the bridge. Carrier crews can send fighter pilots into their own stations; other ships keep the focus on Helm, Weapons, Science, Engineering, Communications, and the Captain. Mission scripts can add custom objectives or let someone run an adventure as a Game Master. This is a toolset for shaping a session, not progression that unlocks a larger campaign as you play.
That open structure has a limit. The default scenario can feel repetitive if your group wants a long narrative, a deep character build, or a sequence of unique co-op levels. Each station has its own controls and information, so the crew still has to learn what each screen is showing and how those jobs overlap. Some stations have more to do during combat than during quiet travel, so the pace and attention vary by role and moment. Mission scripts can supply a different objective, but they need to be selected or added rather than assumed to be a complete campaign.
The co-op game is designed for several computers connected to one simulation. One PC runs the host/server and main view; the other stations connect as clients. For a group in one room, put the computers on the same local network and install the game on the crew’s machines. A Captain needs no separate workstation, though the group may still want a screen for the main view. The PC Steam version is Windows-only, so it is not a mixed Windows/macOS/Linux session.
Remote play is possible by connecting to a player-hosted game, but there is no matchmaking service. Your group needs to find a host and connect to its network address; remote players may need the host to configure router port forwarding and allow the game through a firewall. If the connection fails, sorting out the cause can take several attempts. LAN is the more straightforward fit when everyone can gather, while online play suits friends willing to handle the host setup.
Artemis is a strong fit for a group that wants the crew dynamic itself to be the game: separate consoles, a Captain’s callouts, shared threats, and missions that reward a bridge pulling its information together. It gives a small pair a way to start and a larger group room to staff more stations or multiple ships. If your friends expect matchmaking, an easy remote invite, or a conventional co-op campaign with persistent progression, its host setup and scenario-based structure may feel like extra work. The reason to choose it is the unusual moment when a handful of different screens and voices turn into one functioning starship.