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It's a measure of how good budget software is these days when I say that I was a little disappointed to see that Caves Of Doom isn't as good as I was expecting. Mastertronic have produced one or two budget gems recently, but Caves Of Doom isn't quite in the same league as titles like Finders Keepers, or its sequel, Spellbound.

Caves Of Doom is a Jet Set Willy clone in which you are trapped in the caves of the planet Doom and have to collect a series of keys before you can escape. Rather than jumping left or right, you are now equipped with a jet-pack which allows you to fly through the caves. The jetpack's fuel is limited, but there are plenty of fuel pods that just happen t be lying around for you to pick up.

As with all the games in this style, there are lots of platforms and ledges, odd-looking sprites, deadly objects to be avoided, and forty screens of action to get through.

It's not bad as platform games go, but there are one or two rough edges that could have been smoothed out to make the game a little more enjoyable. The graphics tend to be a bit on the stick-insect side, and the figure that you control is very small (I think we're back to single character size graphics), though the animation is quite good on the whole.

The main problem I found was that many of the routes you have to negotiate are so narrow that you need to move with single pixel precision. That wouldn't be so bad if you had time to get yourself all lined up for the crucial moves, but on many screens there are sprites that home-in on you so quickly that you are forced to blunder ahead at full speed or get zapped.

I did find this feature rather frustrating and was tempted to give up on the game quite quickly, but fortunately the game has one additional feature that makes it both a better game and good value for money. Like some more expensive games in this vein, Caves Of Doom has a built-in screen editor that allows you to customize the screens and, in effect, to build your own game. So, if you come across any of those tight squeezes that I mentioned before all you have to do is press 'E' on the main menu at the start of the game and you can slip into edit mode and just remove a few obstacles.

This editing facility means that the game doesn't have to lose its appeal as soon as you've completed it once, and, when compared to games like Lode Runner, which had a similar editing facility but which cost three or four times as much, Caves Of Doom is very good value for money.