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I am always sceptical of any game whose inlay card promises zillions of different screens because, in most cases, this "technical innovation" is either camouflage or the reason for a very thin game.

Fortunately there have been games of this ilk that have actually delivered the goods - notably the Doomdark series from Beyond.

Unfortunately Explorer is not one of those happy exceptions to the rule.

Stranded 30-billion light years from the nearest service station, your inertial stablizers have inconveniently cut out. The only thing to do is crashland on the Emerald planet below you.

Just prior to impact, your ship's sensors told you that the planet consisted of 40 billion mappable locations.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the impact of the crash has scattered fragments of your ship into nine of them. You must find all nine bits of your ship before escaping the Emerald planet.

To help you in your quest you have various bits of equipment at your disposal, including a jet pack, nine radio beacons, nine anti-grav drones for sending any spacecraft bits you have found to the nearest beacon, object sonar, radio direction finder, a compass, and a laser pulse gun which is used to kill off any robotic bugs you may find - a tedious addition to the game.

Radio beacons can be dropped anywhere and then used whenever you want to get your bearings by using triangulation.

The jet pack allows you to hover 1,000 or 2,000 feet above the planet's surface in order to survey the surrounding terrain. You can also move in any direction with the jet pack. This is a much faster way to travel than trekking over the planet's surface.

An even faster way of getting about is found inside strange red and yellow checked structures that seem to act as some kind of transporter points.

Once you have entered one you will be asked where you want to go. You can enter anything from London to Metcalfesuille - every place exists on the Emerald planet, but every time you enter a transporter point and type in the same place that's where you'll be taken - so at least it's consistent.

All the locations are shown as full screen graphics built up from a number of graphical primitives giving an effective atmospheric feel to the proceedings. Such features as palm trees, running water, temples, and other dwellings are visible, but very little of the surface feature can be interacted with.

As you alter your compass heading so your view flicks round to reflect the new direction in which you're heading.

The trouble is that, after a while, each new location looks the same as the last one.

Explorer is a brave attempt at creating something a little different on computer, but it turns out to be little more than a triangulation exercise with graphics bolted on to obscure the fact that it's a tediously boring exercise at that! If you want to get your bearings - steer clear of this one.