Starflight is a space exploration, combat, and trading role-playing video game created by Binary Systems and published by Electronic Arts in 1986. Originally developed for IBM PC compatibles, it was later ported to the Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, and Commodore 64. A fully revamped version of the game was released for the Genesis in 1991.

Set in the year 4620, the game puts players in the role of a starship captain sent to explore the galaxy. There is no set path, allowing players to switch freely between mining, ship-to-ship combat, and alien diplomacy. The broader plot of the game emerges slowly, as the player discovers that an ancient race of beings is causing stars to flare and destroy all living creatures.

The game has been widely praised by both contemporary and modern critics, and is one of the earliest instances of a sandbox game. It led to the development of a sequel, Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula, and influenced the design of numerous other games for decades after its release.

Gameplay

The player begins inside a space station called Starport orbiting the planet Arth. Here they buy and sell minerals, Endurium (fuel), and artifacts, recruit and train crew members, and upgrade parts of the ship. The player hires a crew from five species All star systems can be entered and all planets landed on, though this destroys the ship if the gravity is greater than 8.0 g. The science officer can scan and analyze the planet for information about it, including its temperature, gravity, and chemical composition. When a landing is ordered, a Mercator projection map shows the topography of each planet, as well as a cursor to select a landing point. Once the ship lands, a Terrain Vehicle can be deployed to drive across the terrain, which is periodically scanned for new information, in search of minerals, lifeforms, and alien ruins. As is the case in outer space, a heads-up display monitors the Terrain Vehicle's status.

Space is also crisscrossed with continuum fluxes, coordinate pairs that allow instantaneous travel between them without consuming fuel. Travel via fluxes cuts down significantly on fuel costs and travel time, though it causes all but the most accomplished navigators to lose their bearings.

Aliens may be cautious, friendly, or hostile, and all have distinctive speech patterns; the player can influence alien reactions by arming weapons and shields or hailing the aliens with varying communication styles. and Uhlek, a destructive fleet of ships with a hive mind. Then-vice president of Electronic Arts Joe Ybarra was also closely involved as producer. McConnell hired colleague Dave Boulton, who had an idea for using fractals to generate an endless virtual universe, along with Kercso, Gonsalves, Lee, and Johnson, all of whom were first time game designers. Ybarra said that the game was almost cancelled more than once, and came out about a year behind schedule. Reiche advised Johnson to draft a "story network" that would highlight all the most important points of the story and list the in-game objects necessary to advance from one to the next. The techniques used created a type of roguelike environment on each planet, with the contents randomly distributed. it was released for the Amiga and Commodore 64 in 1989 and the Atari ST and Macintosh in 1990, and a Sega Genesis version was published in 1991. The Genesis version has new graphics, modifications to the ship, and upgrades for the Terrain Vehicle, including equipment to allow amphibious mining.

Reception

By December 1987 Starflight sold over 100,000 copies, and eventually went on to sell over a million copies. In 1986 and 1987, Computer Gaming World declared it "the best space exploration game in years" and "the best science fiction game available on computer". The magazine named Starflight its Adventure Game of the Year for 1987, and in August 1988, it joined the magazine's Hall of Fame for games highly rated over time by readers, with the third-highest rating for action/adventure games on the list, and the fourth-highest overall. A 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave the game four stars out of five, stating that "such rich NPCs offered additional suspension of belief".

Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle named Starflight his game of the month for January 1987, stating that it was "as much a career as a game" and "fascinating". Fellow writer Orson Scott Card wrote: "Starflight is the first science fiction computer game that actually gives you something of the experience of roaming through the galaxy. ... I have found this game obsessively fascinating—and the graphics and player interface are superb".

Compute! listed it in May 1988 as one of "Our Favorite Games", stating that "Starflight captures the feel of a certain type of science fiction ... the game can take hundreds of hours to play fully, yet those hours are anything but boring".

In the June 1990 edition of Games International (Issue 15), John Harrington patiently endured the first stage of ship building, but said that after the ship launched, "the game comes into its own [...] The sense of playing a small part in a grand story is very strong". He did point out some minor drawbacks, but concluded by giving the game an above average rating of 8 out of 10, saying that the game "incorporates [...] a depth and quality of imagination one has not come to expect from an industry obsessed with rehashing alien zapping shott-em-ups".

In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Starflight the 55th-best computer game ever released.

Ybarra said in 1987 that the game had created a "beachhead in the arena of sci-fi" for Electronic Arts.

Legacy

A sequel was released in 1989: Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula.

Reiche was inspired by the game to create Star Control, with Johnson coding three of the alien species in the game; Mass Effect director Casey Hudson tweeted in 2011 that "Starflight was a key inspiration for the ME series". Starflight is often cited along with Elite, which appeared two years earlier with similar gameplay, as early open world space exploration games. Dwarf Fortresss forgotten beasts were inspired by the procedurally generated lifeforms within Starflight.

Starflight was mentioned among GameSpot's list of ten games that should be remade; its expansiveness and depth, simplicity and elegance of game mechanics, and multi-level problem solving remain high-regarded in the early 21st-century.

It is freely available, albeit in streaming mode only, on the Internet Archive under AROS Public License copyright 1995–2016, courtesy the AROS Development Team. It is also readily available for download. Such is its legacy that there have been numerous fan remakes (some of which projects have failed).

References

Sources

  • Podcast episode of DOS Game Club about Starflight