Monument Microgames don't do things by halves. Their Spectrum games come with amazing artwork, a mini-CD containing an emulator-friendly version of their latest game, a full colour instruction manual and in clear double-sized boxes. Endless Forms Most Beautiful is, in fact, a compilation of three games - with Stamp Quest and Biscuits In Hell included as freebies with the main feature, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, hereafter EFMB.

The afore mentioned instruction manual is filled with drivel and topped off with blah blah blah, and you'll be as just as clueless after reading it as if you didn't bother. To sum it up, EFMB is a platform game (Yes, another one!) with the dubious distinction that it generates all of its levels from a "seed", meaning that no two games should ever be the same. You play Moebius, an elf-like looking humanoid, who must collect up the so-called "beautiful" things on each screen, avoiding all the patrolling nasties by use of the teleporters or by a quick mosey out of one side of the screen onto the platform either above or below. And, erm, that's it.

I was rather bewildered by the simplicity of EFMB. I don't know if I'm just particularly gifted at playing it or whether it really is ridiculously easy. Either way, though, I found absolutely nothing that made my palms sweaty or my pulse rate increase. You have to contend with nasties in the form of patrolling nasties who roam from side to side, a sort of "caterpillar of colours" that descends from the top to the bottom and the odd bomb which randomly appears when you pick up a thing. I found it a cinch to avoid all three - with eight levels of platform on each screen, and with some levels completely unoccupied by baddies at all, there is always a safe space to head to. Likewise, to avoid the caterpillar you just decend through the platforms to the bottom whereupon you appear again at the top. You move much faster than the caterpillar so it never feels like much of a threat. As for the patrolling nasties, there are so many teleporters scattered around every level that you can swoop in and grab the booty from under their very noses and then just run to a teleporter and escape to the platform either above or below.

The big 'draw' of EFMB seems to be the fact that it always gives you a "different" screen to complete. The trouble is, though, that the screens all seem to be of the same difficulty; by which I mean, all very easy. When you do get killed, it's usually just through sheer bad luck. For example, on the very top level of the screen you're vulnerable to the caterpillar which appears without warning. And, very very rarely, a baddy will suddenly change direction or move up a platform when you least expect it. This doesn't so much as introduce a period of randomness as just feel quite unsporting. And, because the action is so incredibly repetitive, I found myself wondering just why EFMB was considered worthy of a physical release at all.

As I said before, there are two additional games included for free - Stamp Quest and Biscuits In Hell. They are both the continuing mediocrity, sorry, I mean adventures of Moebius and are simply variations of the game that replace the beautiful things with stamps and biscuits respectively. Sure, they handle a little differently but really not so much that I feel the need to spend any time discussing the differences here.

The verdict? Well, I suppose everything reacts well and some of the games have some nice AY music on the Spectrum 128K models. But personally I really don't understand why anyone would want to play any of these games for longer than a few minutes. If that. You're challenged to make it through at least ten screens, and every time you win or lose a screen you get an updated report of your progress and, statistically, whether you've won more games than you've lost. I suppose the ten screen limit might have been imposed to try and terminate play before boredom set in. Unfortunately, in my case, EFMB probably needed to drop this limit to three.