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When it comes to Apple games those funny folk at Penguin Software certainly know what they're talking about. So when they say that Bouncing Kamungas is "among the silliest of games" you'd better believe it.

Bouncing whats? Oh, come on, don't say you don't know what a Kamunga is! Neither did I, but I can now reveal that they are "cute little furballs that rain from the overcast Dakota sky". Why Dakota? That just happens to be where your melon farm is.

That's right - a melon farm! You play the part of a farmer who plants melon seeds, but unfortunately the Kamungas take great delight in squashing them as they ripen. They drop down from the sky and bounce all over the place, while you try to defend your produce with a pitchfork.

Being an overcast sky, there's lightning about, so you can't keep your pitchfork up too long. If the Kamungas squash your melons you can plant more, but if they land on your head you lose a life. Also, Dakotan weather snakes appear on the scene. They're not deadly, but if you frighten one, all the melons you have harvested are spoiled.

If you manage to successfully harvest nine ripe melons the scene changes as you take them to market in your truck. Ideally, you'd like to get there as fast as possible, but the Peronies which lie on the road cause the melons to bounce out of the truck.

If you drive over them slowly, your melons stay aboard - but the longer you take the lower the price you get. Once you make it to the market you return to the melon fields and start trying to raise another crop. This time the Kamungas come in increasing numbers, so it gets increasingly harder to protect the melons and let them ripen.

Control is via joystick or keyboard, and there are the usual convenience keys for controlling sounds, pausing the game and restarting from the beginning. The top five scores are saved to the disc.

Bouncing Kamungas certainly is a silly game, but it's also fun to play. Once you've played a game or two, it's not too difficult to get a reasonable score.

By the time you start on your third crop, though, it's quite difficult to keep any melons from the hordes of Kamungas raining from the sky - particularly if you don't want to join the Ben Franklin school for ex-farmers.