Galactic Quest

Galactic Quest is a 1-player space-themed strategy combat and trading game.

Played from a top-down perspective, the player controls a small spaceship with the goal of exploring the galaxy and trading with different spaceports to increase funds and upgrade their spaceship. To hamper this, Vegan warships will harass the player and force them into combat. The galaxy is divided into a large 8 x 8 grid, with each zone containing starships, planets, asteroids, suns, and other bodies. The player has 2 movement options, sublight and hyperspace, where sublight allows movement within a quadrant and hyperspace allows movement between quadrants. The player chooses which direction to travel from 360 degrees, and the distance to travel. The player must closely monitor their fuel reserves, personnel, and ship status. Trading is menu-based, and each starport is willing to sell or purchase specific goods.

The player comes under attack often by Vegan warships, which appear and surround the player. The player's ship has meson lasers and rifter pods to defend themselves, which are fired by choosing a direction and power of the shot.

In the Atari 400/800 version, combat occurs with just a single ship at a time, and battles are fought with a first person perspective. Players do not need to select the direction of their attacks nor movements. As well, movement on the galactic map occurs in the 4 cardinal directions, and is tile-based, so that the player does not need to type in the direction nor the power of each movement.