Down a hole

The flow of games from Minerva Software continues unabated and this month the offerings look much more interesting. The title screen of Caverns reveals four views of an interestingly designed spaceship, all of which rotate in 3D at different speeds in a truly impressive display.

Then there's a long delay as the main program loads and the instruction screen appears. This is quite a letdown, being just coloured text on an otherwise blank screen.

You can select an option which provides instructions and fills you in on the plot - once again the instructions are just boring screens of coloured text with several grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

The game involves you moving around underground caverns in a spaceship, deactivating switches, moving objects from one place to another and finally causing a cataclysmic explosion in the enemy H.Q. - all fairly routine stuff for us saviours of the universe.

Pressing the spacebar gets you into the game and you get another letdown: It's not in 3D at all - in fact the apparent 3D-ness of your ship is simply the way the separate sprites have been drawn (probably on a 3D design package) and it's very disconcerting.

You start off in a protected area, and giving your ship a little thrust moves it up and out. You can use either the mouse or the keyboard - the former is very tricky to get the hang of although I preferred it.

The first thing you spot in this strange environment is a wormlike creature wiggling around on the bottom - I use this word in preference to ground because the whole feel of the game is that it's underwater rather than flying.

There's a gentle gravitational effect which will catch the unwary as your acceleration builds up slowly but inexorably. The thrust from your ship is very powerful by comparison, and you move around with tiny bursts of power. The worm is harmless and can't be damaged by shooting.

The background scrolls smoothly and you can see many different types of terrain with quite a high degree of detail. At first there seems little to do until you come across oneofthe fixed gun stations that will shoot at you, or a barrier composed of blocks that explode - often setting off a chain reaction with others around it.

You can shoot a blob from a gun mounted in the front ofyour vessel. It is fired when you release the button, and the longer you hold the key down the more powerful the shot.

On impact your shell explodes and breaks into a number of pieces which can ricochet off and do more damage. In fact, this is the easiest way of knocking out the first gun emplacement - simply by staying out of direct line and firing near it.

Apart from the gun there's another strange thing which launches duplicates of itself upwards to devastating effect. Blowing up the original puts an end to its tricks.

Having played the game for many hours I found a type of block that reproduces itself like a version of the Life game once it's been shot at, one of the necessary switches that could be shot at, and one that was so well defended I couldn't get at it.

Moving into the second area revealed a fish splashing around in a pool and a tunnel that seems impossible to get out of.

Knocking out part of the ceiling caused a big white bubble to descend blocking the route completely.

The graphics are colourful and effectively used, but sound is almost non-existent. The game seems reasonably good but a little too hard and I soon ran out of places to go although the play area is quite huge - I just ran out of options.

The title screen is misleading but that's not the game's fault and the information screens lack polish. I did enjoy playing it - I just wish I could have got further.

Lazarus