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If you've played any of the Sirius adventure games, you'll have met a Grud or two along the way. They're usually hidden in a cave or on an island somewhere, and don't seem to proliferate on Earth.

Once you leave terra firma, though, it's a different story. The solar system is positively crawling with them, if Gruds In Space is to be believed.

They're still not exactly friendly little fellows, despite the cheery wave from the Grud on the title screen. However, being practical, they'll do business with you if you've got something they want.

The adventure begins when you receive a transmission from President Fred offering you a reward of $1 million if you get some fuel to a stranded cargo ship.

The fuel is somewhere on Saturn and the cargo ship is on Pluto. The only useful information you are given are the nagivational coordinates for Saturn and the teleport coordinates for the mining camp.

It seems that Arthur Scargill's influence extends even farther than the NUM dares to hope because you're warned that the miner have become rebellious.

Once again then it's time to boldly go where no hand has set foot. Apart from the imaginative scenario this is pretty much a standard hi-res adventure game.

The graphics are quite good and there are several bits of animation to add extra interest. There are some sound effects which can be toggled off, and all the other convenience controls are there too.

Gruds is a fairly big game by single-disc standards and it involves a lot of moving about - a bit *too* much at times. There is an interesting variant on the maze theme using colour-coded auto-locking doors and this will keep you to-ing and fro-ing for quite a while.

It's average to hard, but nothing really nasty. You can ask for hints, and occasionally you get one. It's certainly a game where you should save regularly, if you don't usually.

It's also worth having saved games at various locations because it can get a little tedious entering navigation and teleport coordinates repeatedly. After all, a wrong entry can lead to unexpected visits into Grudless space.