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This is a game about deranged carpet fitters. The screen depicts the plan of a very large room with several exits. The object is to cover the room with white carpet, of which you have an unlimited stock. The main problems come in the form of your apprentice - who's absolutely nuts and should be locked up - and rival firms of fitters who have also been asked to do the job. Lying about the room are various useful implements like tacks and cutters and a hammer. as well as the essential key (without which you cannot leave a room). There is also food around, which must be eaten if you aren't to starve to death.

Your apprentice goes about eating all the food and picking up all the useful objects as well as removing your carpet as fast as you lay it. As a target is set and must be reached before you can leave the room, if you've got the key, and score points for squares of carpet laid, you must keep well ahead of the apprentice's depredations. Another problem is that you cannot walk over cleanly laid carpet, so it's easy to get trapped. One way out is to drop two objects if you have them and spoil the square, which lets you out. Alternatively you will have to wait until the idiot catches up and removes a square to let you out.

You will be stopped from laying carpet if you run out of tacks or use up hammers and cutters. Escaping from a room through the correct exit leads you into another room. There are nine in all, each with their own spatial problems and rival carpet fitters.

Control keys: very badly placed in a straight line - O/P left/right, Q/A down/up, SPACE for drop
Joystick: joystick option mentioned but not stated which
Keyboard play: uncontrollable and terrible keyboard layout
Use of colour: average
Graphics: primitive
Sound: fair, repetitive and unimaginative
Skill levels: 1
Lives: you only die once
Originality: a possibly good idea obscured by a bad game

'First glance at the cover and I thought this was going to be a great game - and I was wrong for the second time in one day! It just goes to show how a great looking cover an fool you into buying a game that turns out to be rubbish. This is the sort of game that you might have bought when the Spectrum was first introduced. I hated it.'

'The idea is certainly an interesting one, and Carpet Capers could have been a winner - except for a number of problems. The graphics are very primitive; you, your apprentice and the rival fitters are tiny squares with an outline of a man in them. They all jigger about the place in an uncontrolled manner, and it takes a long while to figure out what the hell is going on. When you do, you realise it really isn't worth it. I'm astonished that a game that looks like this one should have been released as new these days. '

'About the only thing written on the cassette inlay that turns out to be true is the warning about TVs interfering and stopping proper loading of the program. It claims (elsewhere) that the graphics are, "Hi-res flicker free graphics" and that the screens are, "FAST machine code action." Well, compiled machine code action maybe - they're certainly not what I would call fast, and no one could claim they were flicker free unless they were blind. The idea behind the game sounds quite good, a sort of updated "Painter" type, but it's hard to enjoy a game that has such poor playability and uncontrollable, poorly designed graphics.'