There is one golden rule: playing computer games should be fun. Did anyone tell that to the people who produced Droids: Escape From Auren?

The subject matter seemed quite promising. The game, according to Mastertronic, is based on the current Droids cartoon strip, featuring Star Wars heroes R2-D2 and C-3PO.

An evil bunch of villains known as the Fromm gang have escaped from a high security prison on the planet Ingo and returned to their former base on Ingo's moon, Auren.

R2-D2 and C-3PO are falling to the moon's surface in their shuttle pod. They crash on the surface, and are captured by the gang. Our droid heroes are imprisoned inside the moon's cavernous interior. But R2-D2 breaks out of the cell using his probe arm. The task is now to escape and reach the surface where, unbeknown to the Droids, Jord and Thall are waiting after following the pod.

Who are Hord and Thall? I hear you ask. Sorry, but that's not explained in the game notes. You control C-3PO, R2-D2 automatically follows.

The screen is split into two areas, the top two thirds being the playing area and the remainder a series of icons which allow the droid to perform certain tasks. For instance, move left or right, throw a crystal, duck, go up or down in a lift.

Moving around the cave passages there are aliens of varying strength. These can be destroyed by chucking crystals at them. R2-D2 and C-3PO each face other hazards. There are controllable obstacles which are operated via consoles. Once a console has been taken over, using the appropriate card, the card is destroyed.

The operating of the consoles forms a sub-game. When R2-D2 plugs into one, the screen switches to this subgame. It consists of seven coloured blocks, which correspond to the seven octaves, which will blink in a (random) sequence.

You must then re-enact this sequence using the cursor. The harder the level, the longer the sequence.

The obstacles include opening and closing rubbish chutes, magnets, sprinklers, sparks and doors.

The main fault of the game lies in the icons. Virtually everything the droid does is controlled by them, even down to moving left or right. The simple act of changing direction becomes exceedingly tedious and turns an already unexciting game into a boring one.

Dreary Droids should be avoided.