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Ever since Ultimate brought out Knight Lore, there has been a whole series of lookalike clones and it takes something fairly original to make a new game stand out from the rest. Such a game is Addictive's latest release, Kirel.

Kirel is a cute frog-like character who must defuse a certain number of bombs on each of the 70 screens before he can move on to the next one. Achieving this is done by picking up and moving bricks around the screen in order to reach the bombs. A considerable amount of strategy is involved here and you are well advised to halt everything whilst you plan your course of action. The problem is that you only have a certain amount of time available in which to achieve your objective. This is depicted by a fuse attached to each room which slowly burns down.

There are, of course, many other problems to hinder you on your mission. Not least of these are the monsters that are roaming all over the place. These attempt to jump on your back and so sap your energy. You can kill them by walking over them providing that you have a piece of cake! These are to be found lying about the place together with bags of sweets which restore your energy, arrows that are needed for building bridges, balls that gain you extra time, cubes for destroying blocks and transporters.

Kirel can only jump up one block at a time. He can also only carry a single brick so you need to play very carefully where you pick them up from. It is all too easy to cut yourself off from areas that you need to access later on. Quite frequently you wander round the screen with no idea of what you are doing. This is partly because the exit to a screen doesn't appear on some screens, you are working blind - e.g. you may have fallen down a hole that you have created (see level 3). In these situations, you can always press the space bar which peels away the bricks, locating Kirel for you.

The graphics are clear and well drawn, although it takes some time to get used to the 3D effects. You can change the perspective of each room at any time, very useful and necessary when you disappear behind a huge pile of bricks. There is also a training mode that allows you to practise the first three screens with no time limit.

This is an original game, made noteworthy by the amount of thought that you have to put into it. So much better than the usual sort of wander round and collect the items variant. It would have been nice to have user-definable keys and I wasn't too keen on the method chosen for changing perspective (90 degrees left and right and 180 degrees rotation - it is easier to have four keys for the different viewpoints) but these minor grumbles apart, I can thoroughly recommend Kirel.