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Ashley and Eric at full stretch in a space-age ball game you won't find in the history books

At first I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing in this game at all, but after a while I began to realise that it's actually quite a subtle game in a sneaky sort of way.

Upon loading, there's a demo mode which shows a court, a rectangular playing area that stretches across the width of the screen and occupies the top two thirds of it. At either end of the court are two medieval knights, named (would you believe it?) Ashley and Eric. In one player mode you control Ashley - a large and finely animated figure in full armour, topped with a plume of feathers - whilst the computer plays the surly-looking Eric. There is also a two player option allowing you to play against someone else (which is probably a good idea since I haven't yet managed to beat the computer-controlled Eric, even on the beginner's level).

You are both armed with short tubes, and tied to the walls at each end of the court by elastic ropes fixed around your waists. Below the court, in the lower part of the screen are an egg-timer which counts down the time left in each game, and bars which register the energy level of each player. Pressing 'S' starts the game as a small yellow ball gets thrown onto the court.

This is where I first got confused. The name Bounces led me to expect a variation on squash or handball, and at first you could think that this is what you've got here. Ashley and Eric can catch the ball in their tubes and shoot it back out again in any direction, but in fact keeping the ball in play isn't all that important. The whole point of the game is to bash your opponent and knock him over. You only score a point when your opponent falls over - the position of the ball doesn't affect the score at all unless you've actually bounced the ball off of Eric in order to send him sprawling.

Catching the ball is tricky (possibly a little too tricky!) and requires a fair bit of skill and practice, but firing the ball at Eric is the best way of scoring a point off him, with the minimum risk to your own player. Though, if you do try this, there's always the possibility that he may catch it and send it back to bounce off you.

One I realised that this was the point of the game, I experimented a bit and totally ignored the ball fo a while. Instead, I got young Ashley to stretch his rope right across the court, walk up to Eric and shove the tube right in his face. I did score a point, but as soon as Eric got to his feet again he bounced the ball off Ashley's kneecaps and levelled the score.

I realise that this may not sound terribly subtle, but after playing the game for a while I began to realise that there are all sorts of little tricks that you can bring into play, and the addition of the elastic ropes adds an extra twist to the game. In order to move around the court you have got to constantly keep pulling against the rope which will pull you into the wall at the end of the court if you're not careful, giving a point to your opponent. The trouble is that pulling against the rope drains your energy level - the further across court you go, the faster your energy falls - so you have to very carefully judge when to stay back and wait for the ball while your energy builds up, and when to rush forward and nobble Eric.

The more I play Bounces, the more enjoyable it becomes. Like squash, it's a fast and basically simpe game, but one which provides plenty of score for skill and strategy, and because of that it's also likely to be one of those games that you can keep on coming back to as you learn more and more about how to play it.