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Unless my eyes deceive me, anarchists have been at work in the buildings occupied by the Deactivators. Everywhere there are bombs - those round, black things with fizzling fuses much loved by cartoonists. Controlling the deactivator droids, you have to find all the bombs and kick them out of the building before they explode.

The game has five buildings of increasing complexity but all work on the same principle. The first building is the simplest to describe, being a 4 x 4 matrix of rooms. To clean up the bombs, you are given control of three droids but each will only patrol a given area of the building. This means that no two droids appear in a room at the same time.

Movement around the droid's given rooms is via doorways, holes in floors, up and down poles or by matter transporters. By these exits, the droid can visit each room as many times as necessary. For two of the droids, the route will have to be learned quickly because of the robot guides who are out to dematerialise them.

These enemies will pursue your robot unless you can out-pace or over-exert them. If you're more than a room away they will freeze and await your next appearance. If they pursue too quickly and fall through several floors in quick succession, the effort will cause them to disintegrate.

In one of the rooms there is a computer which controls the matter transfer units. One of the units is inoperative and the only way to free the droid on that floor is by finding the circuit board which is hidden elsewhere in the building. Which brings us to the next problem!

The circuit board to free the droid is in a sector patrolled by one of the other droids. Once the droid has found the board, he can throw it through a window into the sector patrolled by the third droid who has the computer in his sector.

Problem three: there aren't any windows. The board controlling the windows is in the vicinity of the computer droid! So first the computer droid must run the gauntlet against its robot guard, find the board, place it in the computer, catch the circuit board from the second droid, place it in the computer and free the first droid! Confused? Just try playing the game. It's worse.

Let's not forget the bombs. While your droids are chasing around with circuit boards in their clammy claws the fuse to the first bomb is fizzling away. If you're too slow you won't be able to throw it out of the exit in time. OK, grab the bomb first. Which one? Which droid can reach the exit? What am I doing here, anyway?

By now you will have gathered that this is a game of strategy, so let's try the scientific approach. There are four icons on the menu; select a droid, throw an object, move the current droid and view the rooms. First use view to see where the exit is. Trace the path back to a droid and then select and move the droid in search of the first bomb. Next take the bomb to the exit and boot it out the door. Now what happens? The second bomb starts to fizzle. Don't panic. Find the circuit board and open the windows. Get the second bomb and throw It to the droid with the exit on its route. Two bombs gone. Manoeuvre the second board to the computer droid and free the trapped droid, get the bomb and kick it out. Job done, easy!

It may seem logical and simple in theory but in practice it's fiendishly difficult. Persistence will get you to the second building and now you begin to understand the meaning of the word 'complex'.

Firstly, there are more droids to guide through even more rooms. Some of the rooms are shrouded in pitch black mystery and others are protected by force fields. All of these can be overcome by finding the correct circuit board for the computer but these are not the only problems.

The building is some sort of research centre where the scientists are messing about with gravity. Some of the droids run along the ceiling, others run along the walls and the more conventional ones run along the floor. For each orientation, the controls are partially or totally reversed. If you'll take my advice, try fitting your television on a turntable so that you can flip it around and make sense of all of these rotations.

If you're very good the Staff Nurse at the asylum may let you try level five... this game calls for total commitment in every sense of the word. By now the cool, calm, scientific mind will have disintegrated, in the face of increasing complexities, to jabbering idiot mode. The dreaded level five has a matrix spanning twelve rooms by four and should be graded as masochistic maniac level.

Apart from the black rooms, force fields, locked windows and the like, you also have the problem of overlapping patrol areas. This has the advantage of having two droids with which to find the boards and bombs but there is a disadvantage; you also have two robot guards on your tail.

Dodging droids! What have I let myself in for? Apart from pincer movements to be avoided, there is also the problem of the matter transfer units. If a droid is near your exit point, it will try travelling towards you through the unit and, if you're in mid-transfer, you're dead.

Should anyone succeed at this level of mental acrobatics, all is not over. You can go back to the starting screen and select the expert level which means that the droids move faster and the bombs go off more readily. Ah yes, I forgot. When a bomb is thrown through a window it will bounce around the room. If the receiving droid is not in position. Too many bounces will cause the bomb to explode.

One small concession is made to player friendliness by giving a free droid on completion of a level. This droid can be brought into play at any point in the game to replace a deceased droid in any room of the building.

The graphics are in pseudo-3D, allowing movement into and out of the screen as well as the usual left and right. Colour is not used to great effect but this should not be considered as a criticism; after all, a chess set is usually a fairly dull affair but the game requires a lot of thought. Similarly, the planning involved in playing this game reduces the desirability of colour.

Although Deactivators is released through the Arlolasoft empire, it was programmed by Tigress Marketing, a company which has recently started to show its teeth with great effect through products like the Golf Construction Set and now this.

Speed is of the essence if a high score is to be achieved and this is gauged on the efficiency with which you deactivate the bombs.

I was totally absorbed by this game; it's highly addictive and if you're not careful it will suck you in and spit you out unceremoniously.