Anything for which the instructions include the line "Cheats Sometimes Prosper!" has to be worth a look.

Alien Mine has you digging for jewels beneath a planet surface while a tank shoots away at your base hut, behind a pile of stone blocks which will fall on you at the earliest opportunity.

If that isn't bad enough, the tunnels you dig are inhabited by wandering nasties who follow you around trying to end your miserable existence!

On-screen presentation is very good, being a flat cross sectional drawing of the underground area around your start point. You have to tunnel away to reach the jewels buried beneath.

Instructions are sparse - you are supposed to work it out for yourself, apparently. Which you will do once you've been shot, buried, eaten alive and squashed a few times.

For a very simple game there are lots of ways to die in Alien Mine! I found it good fun and cleverly written. It will not go stale easily and the key layout is fairly easy to use. All in all, highly playable and recommended.

R.H.