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As a starship commander controlled by Interstel, your aim is to make money - lots of it. The place to do it is right above your head, up there in the vast unfathomed depths of space.

After gathering a crew and kitting out your craft with cargo pods, it's time to set off for the void: an entrepreneurial hunting ground fraught with as much risk as reward.

Your two primary goals are inextricably linked: to gather information and generate revenue. Cash is initially gained from the sale of minerals, artifacts, lifeforms and their data, and from recommending viable colony worlds - but you can also dabble in a little piracy if your skills are up to it.

Starflight comes with a map of the system - but a map only shows you where to go, not what you'll find there. The downside of prosperity is the danger of getting killed, and there are adequate opportunities for doing just that...

Starflight plays like a cross between Elite and Psi-5 Trading Company, combining a vast, complex universe with a hierarchical ship command structure and concise visual display. Its strategic elements are superb: you soon learn to explore the brown and blue class planets for life forms, and adopt varied tactics in combat against alien races.

The Velox, for example, can be treated with hostility because they surrender fairly easily, but the Thyrynn should be avoided at all costs, since without major defence customisations they'll soon convert your ship into free ranging atoms.

The beginning can be repetitive (you have to do a lot of mining if you want to get tough quickly) but you only need to do it once.

The only major faults are the sluggish disk access and the fact that the action doesn't look or sound too impressive.

For this reason, Starflight will probably appeal more to those who like to concentrate on strategy rather than arcade gamesplayers.