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Ariolasoft's latest game makes you feel like a new man!

From being an expensive US software importer, Ariolasoft is maturing into one of the better mid-range software houses.

Ariolasoft's latest game, Bride Of Frankenstein, is an original maze set in the castle of the evil Dr. Frankenstein.

You play the young lady betrothed to the monster. But you have a problem. Before you can marry your man, you have to find the parts necessary to build him!

The search is on then to find all the various bits and bobs: bodily organ; heart (How romantic!); kidneys; lungs, etc that go to make up a nice monster like Frankie.

However, you have to be sure you get good quality parts to construct your beloved, as there's some real rubbish around that won't do him any good at all! And, as you may have guessed, getting these components is not as easy. The castle is a 60 room warren of rooms, staircases and secret passages. There is also the tower, where Frankie is lying dormant.

Running around these rooms are all manner of spooks, spectres and evil creatures. As you have nothing to defend yourself with, you had best avoid them - otherwise the strain on your already-frail heart could prove too much. Increasing strain on your heart is shown by a little picture of one on the screen. Instead of a meaningless energy bar, or an even more meaningless three lives, Bride Of Frankenstein features a little heart. It throbs away, getting faster and faster as you get more and more terrified by the nasties. They are in the graveyard, in the laboratories *and* in the crypt!

If your poor overstrained heart starts beating too fast it will burst and you will have encountered the "special cardiac arrest feature" made so much of on the packaging and, of course, you only have one life, so...

Of course you could always - if you can find the green Elixir of Life - take some of it to calm you down, or seek one of the sanctuary arches to recover in.

To find your loved one you have to get together various objects and solve *all* the puzzles. Some doors are locked, for instance, so you have to find the appropriate key - there are seven keys in all, they all fit different doors and there is no way of telling which fits which unless you try them all!

The control and object system is icon-controlled. Pictures of what you have collected line up along the bottom of the screen. There is also a directional control for the spade and the axe - used for grave robbing, etc.

The graphics are of very high quality - all the objects and on-screen features are large and well coloured using the multi-coloured graphics mode of the Amstrad. The rooms are displayed in semi-3D and you get that glued-to-one-corner-of-the-ceiling feeling as you look down on the action at an angle.

A very impressive game that is well structured and logical, interesting to play and watch and extremely humorous. I hope Ariolasoft continues to produce games like this and doesn't fall into the same trap as many software houses who bottle and end up producing variations on the same boring theme.