Introduction

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Triax is an evil fellow. He's a genetic scientist who's gone a bit 'cosi-fan-tutti' in the old brain region. Instead of developing fungi or new strains of lichen, he's turned his skills to warping helpless humans and making them into maggot-people. While passing the planet Phoebus, you receive a distress signal. It tells you that fruit-bat Triax has taken over the planet and set up a production line for his maggot-man. So you decide to intervene.

The planet is sliced through, as you might slice through an orange or a pomegranate to see what fleshy gubbins are therein. Exile's fleshy gubbins run along the lines of chairs, cannons, teleporters and doors (in the space ship) and rocks, geological strata, trees and ponds (in the planet). The planet is huge, but while it's neat doing Superman impressions as you scroll across the surface, watch out for the dangerous headwinds, deadly thermals and dastardly meteorite showers which become more intense as the game goes on. Avoiding meteors is difficult when you've got gravity, inertia and all the laws of physics to deal with.

Explore a bit and there'll be rotating cannons, mischievous imps, angry tanks and big chopping blades to hamper your progress. Penetrate any further and you'll no doubt encounter some blubbery maggots, some wasps and terrible old Triax himself.

Doors come in the vertical and horizontal varieties, and block off all the interesting-looking caverns you're dying to get into. Grenades can solve the problem but the tougher armoured doors require a key (of all things). Power packs are tricky to pick up and highly volatile - touching one sets off a self-destruct sequence, but they're essential if you need some calories for your backback. So you have to grab and store them pretty quickly.

On the violence front, the game starts slowly. Most of the promised wholesale destruction and concentrated apocalypses tend to be directed at you. This all changes when you find the pistol. It's a bit on the wimpy side but you can still show those aliens who's boss.

The grenades are ace. They're handy for ionising doors and aliens, but make sure you're a safe distance from the conflagration to avoid being toasted.

Macca

The main problem with most rotaty-irritating-gravity games is the walls. No matter what they're made of (rock, metal, grass or sponge), they're fatal. One touch = buy the farm. Now, however, the programmers of Exile have made their walls friendly. Hard, but basically aimiable. So, instead of purchasing a certain agricultural homestead, you now rebound on contact. This, however, begets another problem - the ricocheting- pinball-blimey-here-I-go-again effect. In Exile, you'll be bouncing and boinging off every inanimate object in a three screen radius if you're not careful (It's quite good fun though.)

Another excellent feature is the fact that you can't die. In a low-energy emergency, the computer reflexively teleports you back to your ship. Ra-ra! This is a good sign because you have all the perks connected with living forever (namely fathering lots of children) and it means that the puzzles are strong enough to keep you interested throughout the game.

There are a lot of puzzles. The main ones involve finding switches and keys for doors and then backtracking through the maze-like subterrania. There are also brain-blending combination puzzles and mystery teleports. It's actually not dissimilar from Stryx. It's all a clever blend of shooting, solving and swearing [Oh, so you've learnt to allierate, have you? - Ed] Let's see if I can end on a 'jokey sentence'. This game - is Exilent. Hah. Pretty funny. Ho, ho! [Ahem - Ed]