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What a silly sausage Mark Caswell is: he volunteered to review a brain-teasing game when he doesn't possess the relevant organ. But luckily the rest of the Zzap! team came to the rescue. With a piece of old knicker elastic, a squeezy bottle and a square of sticky-backed plastic, they made him a brain. It didn't improve his game-playing abilities, but at least he can now hold a joystick properly...

With a brain the size of a deformed gnat, I'm usually the last person to volunteer to play a brain-busting game. But torture is an amazing way to persuade someone to something, so here's the Flippit review (put that poker down, Phil). The game is (so claims the blurb) an entertaining series of graphic puzzles designed to simulate the mind. I personally think it's designed to turn small children into gibbering wrecks (only joking... or am I?).

There are over 100 levels, and the basic idea of the game is to swap around a grid filled with differently coloured tiles. Sixteen squares make up each grid, and the player's task is to match the tiles in the main grid with its counterpart in the bottom right of the screen (Confused? You will be!).

On the title screen you're faced with the aftermath of a horrific road accident...

There's a choice of levels to start on, so take yer pick (and no jokes about Irishmen and shovels, please). The player is given control over a free-floating pointer, and when you click on a tile it changes pattern (along with a number of others). So it's best to take note of the change in each tile as you go along. As you can imagine, this is initially very frustrating indeed (cue much use of colourful language).

But if you take a couple of seconds out from kicking your 64 round the room, you'll notice a timer and a 'moves made' counter. Don't panic though, there's no set time limit, it's just a case of the faster you finish the better (and in the least amount of moves). Indeed if playing with pals, the person who completes the current grid in the fastest time is entered in the 'low score' table. It's as simple as that.

Gawd, this is like one of those games they play on The Crystal Maze... at least you don't get Richard O'Brien playing his damn harmonica all the time here. Flippit is more a test of... uhm, thingie, y'know memory rather than intelligence. Even with instructions it takes a couple of games to get into the swing of things.

Graphically the game is very simplistic, but I suppose you can't be very artistic with a grid of tiles. Short-term interest is fairly high, but long-term appeal isn't on the cards, I'm afraid.

Being a big fan of the Rubik's Cube (any crumblies remember them?), I was quite looking forward to playing Flippit. Alas, it wasn't long before I was gazing out of the window and twiddling my thumbs, wishing I was somewhere else - anywhere would do, just get me away from this bloody game!

Although marketed as a puzzler, it's really just a complicated memory test. If you can remember which squares affect which others, you'll win. If not, you won't. If you make notes as you go you'll succeed every time, but I suppose that's cheating!

If you're the sort of bod who watches The Generation Game purely for the conveyor belt bit, you might find Flippit to your liking. For me there's too little to it, and what's there just isn't interesting enough. 69%

Presentation 70%
Neat title screen and distinct lack of multi-load.

Graphics 69%
Not exactly Tony Hart, but they're sufficient.

Sound 45%
Ear-wrenching sound effects, and not a lot else.

Hookability 70%
Flippit is initially very playable and fun!

Lastability 60%
Several strong cups of coffee ahoy missus!

Overall 65%