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One day, as Davey O'Brian was on his way to the local trading post for a few tins of beans and a bag of beef jerky, he came across a dying Red Indian. There was no saving the brave, and he begged Davey to wait for him to die then bury his body so that his soul could enter the Happy Hunting Ground. Davey's reward was a map, showing the way to the Indian's home territory of Colorado, wherein lay the Lost Gold Mine of Pocahontas. Forgetting his shopping list for the time being, Davey jumped into his canoe and paddled to Colorado to start his search for riches.

To find the mine, Davey now has to tramp around sets of locations, beating or cajoling information from the local Indian population, and that means finding weapons and useful items to trade with Mr. MacBiggle whose mobile trading post happens to be passing through the neighbourhood.

To travel between the different areas, Davey has to jump in his canoe and paddle through a 3D river subgame, fending off Indian war canoes with his paddle and dodging falling boulders.

Games set in the Wild Mid-West are a rarity these days, but, as far as gameplay goes, Colorado is pretty familiar stuff. This walk-chop-and-collect malarkey has been entertaining 16-bit owners since 1986 when Psygnosis brought out Barbarian, and it doesn't seem to have progressed a whole lot since.

Wander around dozens of screens, beat up some understandably hostile Indians and think up tenuous links between objects and adverse circumstances.

Colorado is rather slow-paced, so if you aren't heavily into this type of game, all the trekking between screens will become tiresome after a while. Luckily, the paddling-down-the-river subgame is rather more action-packed and I'm ashamed to admit that my happiest moments with this game were spent splatting people in the mush with my paddle.

The graphics are pretty but samey, and the characters are stiffly animated, making them occasionally look robotic. Sound doesn't play a major part in the gameplay, and the Amiga's sound circuitry busies itself with rendering an insipid tune, and muffled speech samples.

If games like this really are your bag, Colorado could be worth tracking down, but more lively players should look elsewhere for their fun.