Another maze game

Cyboto, the latest offering from Go-Dax, is a mixture of Repton and Gauntlet but lacks the variety and originality of eiither. You are at the heart of a futuristic maze playing the part of Cyboto - the last of the cyborgs. The title screen offers two options in addition to playing the game. The first, info, displays the geometric snowflakes - four are enemy androids that should be avoided and the fifth, a Pod, represents treasure that you collect.

Option two is your gateway to the higher levels. Every maze has a name, and by entering it as a password you can start from the highest level reached so far.

Each maze contains 10 pods and a running total of the number collected is displayed at all times. The first few pods are unguarded and easy to find, but the last couple are hidden down convoluted corridors and guarded by droids. You've got problems. As soon as the final pod is in your grasp, you are teleported to the next - infinitely more fiendish - maze. Halfway through level one I was experiencing difficulties: Some of the pods were situated at the bottom of mined cul-de-sacs with no safe path through.

Cyboto didn't appear to have any offensive capabilities, just movement in the four compass directions. A thorough exploration of the keyboard revealed not only Cyboto's force shield, but also a map of the whole maze, complete with the pod positions.

The shield is activated by holding down Shift and power is represented by the five horizontal bars at the bottom of the screen. These shrink when the shield is on and recharge slowly when it is not in use. Walk through an android with your shields up and he vaporises instantly - once zapped, they do not reappear.

Apart from death by droid, you may also lose a life by taking too long to complete the maze. A time limit of 7000 units begins to tick away as soon as you start and the speed of tick increases tremendously when you take a look at the map, so use this facility sparingly. Rather sneakily, the programmers have rendered the pause option inoperative while you're using the map screen.

The mazes are a similar size to those used in Repton but are not bounded by solid walls - if you walk far enough in one direction you will eventually return to your starting point. The game lacks a puzzle element like the precariously-balanced boulders in Repton.

Cyboto has all the makings of a good maze game, but it needs some kind of gimmick if it is to sell well in this very competitive area of the games market.

James Riddell