Squadron 42 is a standalone singleplayer campaign in the Star Citizen universe, fully playable offline. It was announced as an episodic trilogy, which many people seem to have forgotten, and each episode will be a fully-fledged game in its own right. CIG are calling Episode 1 simply ‘Squadron 42’. Work on Episode 2, called Behind Enemy Lines, and an unnamed Episode 3 has already begun. In terms of the Star Citizen timeline, Episode 1 is set before the events of the main game (aka the ‘persistent universe’). CIG has not yet said when Episodes 2 and 3 are set.

Episode 1—which we’ll just call Squadron 42 from now on—will take place across 28 chapters. Back in 2015, when it was only planned to be 21 chapters long, head of CIG Chris Roberts said it’d take around 20 hours to complete, which is still the latest estimate we have.

Squadron 42 was initially being developed by Foundry 42, a studio within CIG led by Chris Roberts' brother Erin, who also worked on the original Wing Commander. However, last year Foundry 42 rebranded, essentially bringing it under the wider Cloud Imperium banner, and Squadron 42 is now being developed by multiple CIG studios.