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Free Fall is not, as its name suggests, a simulation of a parachute drop, but a game of survival in space. Your space station has been attached by Alphoids who have injected the air supplies with cyanide. Only one member of the crew managed to don his space suit in time and your task is to keep him alive as long as possible.

To survive, the crewman must destroy the Alphoids but, having no weapons, our hero can only kill them by punching, kicking or ramming them. To do this, you control the air-jets attached to his suit and move his arms and legs. Sounds simple, but the Alphoids appear as four different types: Craboids, Lobstoids, Bastoids and Waspoids. Between them they have the power to bite through the space suit and inject a nerve toxin into the blood, breathe fire and catch and throw bombs. If you are lucky enough to catch a bomb you can throw it at them.

The space station is represented as a large octagon on the screen display. Other on-screen information includes the rotation rate of the station, which increases with the score; an air supply meter and a heartbeat monitor. The heartbeat increases when the crewman is bitten and emits an appropriate blip-like sound.

The display is black-and-white as it uses the high resolution mode, and character definition is good. The crewman is controlled by eight keys (or by joystick) and this is the most awkward part of the game. Considering the number of controls involved, the key layout is well thought out but it takes some getting used to, and I found it tempting to propel the crewman at the Alphoids using only the air-jets.

An extra life is awarded after 100 points and every 200 thereafter.

Free Fall is, like most Acornsoft games, technically good and represents a novel approach to 'alien lifeform' games. It certainly provided me with a few hours of fun.

Jeremy Vine