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If you haven't quite got the artistic touch with a brush to play a Crazy Painer game, you could do worse than try your hand at this more robust variation.

Instead of painting, you have to lay carpets. This is difficult enough at the best of times, but in Carpet Capers you face a host of problems besides banging your thumb with a hammer.

The game has nine screens, each one representing a different room to be carpeted and each one presenting particular problems. In the convervatory there are numerous bushes to be avoided, in the billiard room an enormous table blocks your path.

In each room you have a target - in pounds - for the amount of carpet you must lay. You get only £1 for every square foot and penalties are incurred for being too slow.

Scattered around the screen are the various tools you need to do the job: hammers, tacks and cutters. These must be collected before you can start scoring. You must also regularly stop to eat the food and drink the tea which are in the rooms.

The main trouble, though, is that the house is full of rival fitters, all beavering away to cover the same rooms.

To move from room to room, you collect the key and find the right exit - but only after reaching your target.

If you carpet yourself into a corner you have to wait for your apprentice to come and rescue you - there's no walking over new carpet.

Carpet Capers is frenetic fun but its graphics are disappointing - the figures are small and there are so many rivals about that the screen display is sometimes very confusing.

Particularly annoying, though, is the layout of the keys. What excuse is there for having up and down next to each other? Get a joystick if you want to play this game.