Freelance Traveller

Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula

reviewed by Jeff Zeitlin

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2026 issue.

Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula. Greg Johnson et alia
Originally Published: Electronic Arts, 1989
Current Availability: Secondhand market and certain abandonware vendors. Can also be played free in browser at https://archive.org/details/msdos_Starflight_2_-_Trade_Routes_of_the_Cloud_Nebula_1989

Reviewer’s note: This review is based on the original MS-DOS version. Versions were also released (in 1991) for the Amiga and Macintosh which were identical within hardware limitations.

Electronic Arts went on from Starflight (reviewed November/December 2025) to improve the game somewhat in Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula. I’d said about Starflight that “…if you squint a bit, you can see something that looks like Traveller over there on the next hill.”; Starflight 2 is a little closer to that hill, in that there’s more of an emphasis on trade, and less on mining other planets for resources, than with Starflight.

The controls in Starflight 2 are essentially identical to those in the original Starflight, although there are additional options to handle some of the new capabilities (like actual trade). The appearance is largely the same as in Starflight, though there is support for more advanced graphic modes, making the graphics noticeably smoother and more detailed.

The copy protection is in the ‘feelies’ that come with the game; as with Starflight, you need to make backups and copies of the original disks, and not use them for play (and for essentially the same reason).

Your initial crew is chosen from the same races that were available to you in the original Starflight, but you’ll find that there are opportunities in the game to trade crew members with some of the other races that you’ll encounter. Having some of these races in your crew can affect the stance you take in contacts with other races; a crewmember from a timid race will not react well to taking a hostile stance, while one from a race that respects strength will object to taking a peaceful or obsequious stance. Avoiding such crew exchanges isn’t completely possible; there is at least one artifact that can only be successfully operated by a crewmember from the race that provides you with it.

As with the earlier game, the multi-species Interstel operation faces a crisis, and you’re tasked with finding the answer. You’ll have to interact with other races and find clues, while at the same time trading and prospecting to earn money to maintain and upgrade your ship. During your efforts, you’ll find clues not only to solving Interstel’s problem, but also to solving another situation that is as big, in its way, as the flaring stars were in Starflight.

Trade is very much key to achieving your aims – from the beginning, where your goal is to earn enough money to upgrade your ship, all the way through to collecting artifacts that you will need to accomplish both the mission that Interstel has set for you and the one of equal or greater importance that you discover for yourself. You’ll find that ‘specialty trade goods’ are of critical importance; some races won’t give you any useful information without you having sold them a specific specialty good; others won’t sell you the specialty good you need until you’ve sold them the one they want. This is where ‘trade routes’ come in; you’ll find it profitable to track which worlds are the sources of which specialty goods, and which worlds are the markets for them.

In some ways, Starflight 2 is a richer game than Starflight. However, its heritage is unquestionably visible, and anything that you might have found to be problematical or distasteful in the operation or presentation of Starflight will likely garner the same reaction in Starflight 2, and for the same reasons. The game play, however, offers enough differences that even having ‘solved’ Starflight (you don’t actually need to have played Starflight to understand Starflight 2; at best, it fills in the back-story), you shouldn’t be bored playing Starflight 2. As with Starflight, there’s no fixed price, so I can’t say whether it’s worth the money. I can say that I enjoy playing it, and that it didn’t fail where Starflight succeeded originally.