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I suppose, if you're a computer games publisher, that you're always willing to give any idea, no matter how ridiculously crude and simplistic, a go. And I suspect the reason why is one word: Tetris. There all the Electron publishers were in 1989, spending months (and in some cases years) creating ever more sophisticated games and packing them all into 32K... Then Mirrorsoft came along with its 3K falling blocks game, everyone became so addicted that they lost months (and in some cases years) of their lives simply playing it, and its publisher laughed all the way to the bank. Oh, for very simple ideas that hypnotise the gaming public, eh? Tennis, Tetris, Flappy Bird, 2048... Loopz. You've never heard of that last one though, because its addictive qualities only exist in the hyperbole of Audiogenic, its publisher.

Loopz is a puzzle game set on a small grid of squares. The grid starts off empty and presents you with your first puzzle piece - which you can place wherever you want. The aim of the game is to create "loopz" by placing each puzzle piece alongside those you've laid already so that they connect, turn through 90 degrees and eventually form a "closed shape" (i.e. a square or a rectangle). If you manage this, your completed shape flashes white and is removed from the board. There's a countdown timer on every new shape you have to place and failure to place it before the timer hits zero results in the loss of one of your three lives.

Occasionally, you're given a 'gopher' icon (a circle) and this allows you to erase any half-formed loop that is getting in the way. This is very useful on later levels where the grid becomes cluttered when the piece you have to place must be dropped but will not fit comfortably anywhere. Once you score a certain amount, you progress to a new level and can breathe a sigh of relief as the grid is emptied again.

There's not really a lot more to say than that. There's no scenario, no girlfriend to rescue or dead family to avenge - it's simplicity itself. You could work out what to do with no instructions whatsoever.

However, there are quite a few problems with Loopz on the Electron. The first one is that the concept itself is dull. Although it's very similar to the seminal Tetris with its move, rotate piece and drop piece mechanics, it just doesn't get the adrenalin pumping in anything like the same way - and no amount of advertising puff about it being "dangerously addictive" on the Loopz box changes that. The second, more specific irk relates to the way it has been programmed here. From the moment the initial menu appears, the game is unreactive. On a standard, unexpanded Electron, it's unreactive almost to the point of unplayability. Quite possibly because it plays a tune throughout the game proper, it seems only to recognise any command to rotate or drop a puzzle piece about half a second after it has been issued. This feature evokes the unenviable feeling in the player that every game is taking twice as long as it should be.

Loopz runs in the Electron's four colour high resolution mode. This is certainly an "interesting" programming choice; most authors avoid that particular mode precisely because screen updating is so slow and such little memory is available for any code they write. To compare Loopz to an obviously similar stablemate, also on the Electron, consider Pipemania. The decision was taken there to create the Electron version of Pipemania in the monochrome mode, and so it flies along, reacting to a very similar move, rotate and drop style of play instantly; consequentially, it's a very addictive puzzle game. You can't help but feel that, were Loopz faster, and in monochrome (and quite possibly without the music) it might well handle in much the same way. True, if it did, it would still be based on a much duller concept than Pipemania, but it may well have found a few fans nevertheless.

As it is however, there's not a lot to be said for Loopz at all - when you've opted to sacrifice the gameplay element of a puzzle game in order to make it look and sound pretty, you've really made the wrong decision. Even more sadly, the graphics and music aren't even particularly good anyway. For a game released in 1991, it looks to me more like something that would have been given away for free with the very first Electrons than the "even better than Tetris" vision that Audiogenic wanted it to be. It's only with a Master RAM Board enabled inside your Electron that Loopz manages to be a fairly competent game.

Loopz comes on cassette in a decorative cardboard box with the BBC Micro game on side A and the Electron game on side B. The good news, if there is any, is that the BBC Micro game doesn't suffer from the lack of responsiveness that the Electron one does, probably meaning that the author chose to create a colourful BBC Micro game first, and then made a lazy Electron version out of it. If so, Loopz isn't the only offender in such a regard. Both BBC and Electron versions are identical in most other respects, giving the player a choice of three game variants and attempting to introduce a bit of variety between levels by introducing bonus games and puzzles to solve.

Loopz on cassette is rare. Only four or five copies of it are actually known to exist as, by 1991, the market for new Electron games had dried up. Only Acorn User was around to review it and it didn't exactly heap praise upon even the BBC version. So, whether its reputation as being pretty slow and dull preceded it, or whether it just arrived so late that no-one was around to play it back in the day, it's one of the few genuinely rare games that you might well pick up for just a few quid if you keep your ear to the ground.

Just don't be deceived by all those claims made by Audiogenic on its behalf - it's not another Tetris. It doesn't even come a close second.