Star Trader is a simple role-playing game. Basically, you own a spaceship and you buy cargo on one planet to then sell on another planet, and hopefully you’ll make a profit. There are seven planets altogether, and each planet has different prices for each of the seven commodities you can trade. You also need to buy food and equipment from the store to get you through your journeys between planets.
You’ll need to keep yourself healthy in the meantime by getting enough food and sleep.
There’s a bar and hotel on each planet where you can get fed and rested. You’ll also need food packets from the store to take on flights with you. My advice would not be to spoil yourself because if you fail your medical at the spaceport you won’t be able to fly.
Getting between planets isn’t straightforward either. Of course, you need to be fit enough but there are other problems. You need to deal with customs when you land on a planet. Here you can choose to declare your goods and pay a hefty charge, or you can take a chance and declare nothing. If your caught you’ll spend the night in jail and when you get out the next day you’ll
be fined and will need a few days to get healthy enough to fly again. During your flight you’ll need to deal with those pesky space pirates that can spring up on you between planets. This is the only action in the game, unless you choose to pay them their demands. To fight the pirates you need to equip your ship with a laser and power packs. The graphics are fairly simple but colourful and the gameplay is very dated, but that’s what us retros love, right?
I first played this game about 20 years ago and it’s one of the games I still really remember playing as a kid. I think it was one of the games on soft aid, the gamers version of band aid in the mid eighties. Overall the graphics are fairly simple and there is little freedom in the game. Anything you choose to do is either selected from a menu or is a yes/no response to a question. You’ll never be completely flummoxed as to what to do next like in other role playing games like the Hobbit or Redhawk. But overall, it’s a game I really like and would recommend to fans of role playing games.
