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French software designers and programmers can always be relied on to come up with games that are a little different, often devoid of any kind of violence (that makes them different from a start!), and covering subjects as diverse as water ski-ing and blowing bubbles.

Infogrames' latest release, Chamonix Challenge, definitely falls into this category but, like many other games from the same stable, a little imagination and creativity has turned a potentially boring subject into an interesting simulation.

The subject in question is mountaineering. Alpine to be precise. CC gives you the chance to pick one of six routes to the top of a mountain range. The routes vary in difficulty, each with its own set of challenges, requiring a different mix of skills and equipment.

Having chosen a route, you can also decide the season (summer or winter), and your time of departure. Both these variables affect the type of climb you can expect. Obviously, if you start at the crack of dawn, you'll get in a full day's climbing before having to stop for the night. In the winter, not only will the weather be more severe, but the number of hours of daylight is also radically reduced.

There are 22 different objects used for climbing, as well as other supplies to choose from.

As in an adventure game, some objects can only be used if you have others as well. For example, there's not much point in taking a set of pitons (anchor points) unless you also have a hammer to knock them into the rock.

The screen is divided into an action window and a number of sub-windows and menus which appear at the appropriate moments. The action window shows a side-on view of the climber when on snow plains and slopes, and a 'behind the climber' view when he is on the rock face.

The joystick does different things depending on what surface you are on at the time. These include testing the integrity of the ground in front of you with an ice pick, jumping over crevasses, picking things out of the rucksack, hammering and inserting ice axes into the ice, and moving individual limbs up to a higher foothold on the rock face, and then dragging yourself up.

Much of the joystick control requires patience and thought rather than speed and dexterity, and some actions, notably climbing rock faces and ice slopes, are somewhat frustrating.

Other areas of the screen include a graphic of your sunglasses (showing a reflection of the route ahead), the temperature, time and altitude, the state of your climber (he even shivers if you don't give him warm enough clothes), a safety guide, and a graphical display of a cable car showing the distance between you and that summit.

Other menus, such as your inventory, appear when you access parts of the screen, in this case by clicking the cursor over the rucksack.

What is good about Chamonix Challenge is the authenticity of the interplay between the climber, his environment, and the tools at his disposal which can, if used intelligently and correctly, be used to cope with most of the eventualities an alpine mountaineer might encounter.

Make no mistake, this is no arcade or adventure game, but a richly graphical, creatively conceived and implemented climbing simulation that will appeal to anyone interested in the sport, but may prove less than stimulating to the purist arcader.