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You know what a strategy game is, don't you? It's one where you have to climb Mount Everest with a packet of biscuits and a box of matches, or sail the seven seas with a mutinous crew and a pound of salt beef. In Jerico 2, you have to besiege a city.

The text-only program gives you the opportunity to input directions for the collection of food and ammunition, and for attacking the city's defences. You start off with 300 men, but this number diminishes as the days go by, either through combat losses or, if you are mean with the rations, desertion.

The instructions tell you to capture Jerico by force or 'otherwise'. If you're the aggressive type you can get your men busy building ballistas, siege towers, and so on. Otherwise you can just sit tight and try to starve out the opposition.

I have one or two reservations about this game. The program doesn't tell you what you've entered in response to its questions and secondly, it will only allow you to attack in one place at a time.

Apart from this, and the fact that I lost every game I played for reasons that didn't strike me as being entirely logical.

Jerico 2 manages to hold one's interest for a few hours. After that...