By December 1987 "Starflight" sold over 100,000 copies, and it eventually went on to sell over a million copies. Critical response to "Starflight" upon its release was extremely positive. Hartley and Patricia Lesser complimented the game in their "The Role of Computers" column in the December 1986 issue of "Dragon", calling it "stunning in its presentation and play". 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".