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When Halloween comes around each year, gamers the world over scour their game collections for something seasonal to play. And the best I came up with last year was Olli & Lisa 2, there aren't many Halloween-themed games at all. What a missed opportunity! Anyway, Rucksack Games has chucked All Hallows: Rise Of The Pumpkin our way this year and, like the majority of John Blythe's games, it's an AGD-written platformer. Yes, another one!

The plot is extremely simple: collect up the five moonstones and three tablets then proceed to the gateway. If you don't make it then the dark lord will arise and enslave all your fellow pumpkins (I think, it's not all that clear). The game begins with a suitably spooky opening screen which informs you that there are only two controls: left and right. That's because, in All Hallows, you play a bouncing pumpkin [Definitely a first for me! - Ed] and bouncing is continuous, so moving left and right automatically sends your pumpkin in a big swinging arc that allows you to move from one platform to another without a jump control. At the expense of constantly needing to be on guard for overhead nasties on which you could bump your head.

The pumpkin is particularly well-animated, and, truth be told, the sprites in this game are all pretty good. The problem is the game itself is far too hard, with the difficulty curve only increasing the further into the caverns you proceed. Mercifully, there is at least some Pumpkin energy to deplete before a blip signals another pumpkin has bitten the dust... but some baddies do still wipe you out on contact - fireballs, for example, and falling into pits of lava, of which there are many. When you do die, you get an elongated, unskippable game over message which pauses for about five seconds before you're able to try again. Very irritating.

All Hallows is one of those games with which there's nothing really wrong, but it's so much like a thousand others that there's only really the Halloween theme to distinguish it. I don't think it's going to set the Spectrum scene on fire and the best that can be said for it is that it might pick up a few fans each year during the season of the witch. Bitmapsoft are currently offering a physical version of it for £8.00 plus postage which seems a bit expensive for what it is. Still, Spectrum users who still go trick-or-treating might find it of some interest.