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Creepy Cave is a budget-priced game from Atlantis where you, as Dirk Daring, must recover your front door key from an evil ghost who nicked it from you one day. Quite what a ghost would want with your front door key, apart from gaining access for a quick spot of haunting, isn't too clear - but the game is quite good fun anyway.

The first thing that greets you when you load Creepy Cave is precisely that - a foreboding picture of a very creepy-looking cave indeed. After the game starts, you must wait for the ghost to float across the first cavern where it begins to leer at you in safety, dangling your door key like a carrot before a donkey.

Infuriated by this show of arrogance, you start off across the cavern floor and promptly dive head first into a pool of acid. Back at the cave entrance you try again. This time a great leap sails you across the acid to the far shore. Ahh! Now you know how to make that infernal ghost grin from the other side of its ectoplasm. Or do you? With mounting satisfaction, you hop from ledge to ledge and finally the opposite side of the cavern is within sight.

With one mighty leap the ghost is before you. Except that you are now in the second cave, and that manic ghost again floats away from you to a safe position, still dangling your key enticingly.

Cave number two is much more interesting, with moving belts to contend with besides the ever-present acid pools. After negotiating a relatively safe path and receiving only a couple more acid baths, again the far end of the cave is reached.

But what's this? Now flaming red-hot chunks of stone are falling from the ceiling and plopping into the acid pools. You begin to wonder whether a quick trip to the key-cutting shop with your spare key might not have been in order after all.

Creepy Cave is quite good family fun. There is no blood and guts, the game is easy to play yet quite addictive, and you never know what surprises the next cave will hold. The story is perhaps a little off-the-cuff, but who cares? The days when games were sold on a storyline itself are long gone.

For a little less money Creepy Cave would be an excellent buy. As it is, with dozens of great budget games appearing every year, Atlantis may have less of a demand for it than there would have been even as little as a year ago.

Barry Woods