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This game is basically a cut down Pacman in three dimensions. Your job is to send your character around a simple maze collecting keys. Once you have the required number, you progress to another maze where you repeat the job, hindered by another set of monsters.

The first maze is occupied by a strange bunch of creatures called the Springy Things. These may look rather stupid but they move very quickly and you have to be very quick to avoid them.

The game is played against the clock (presumably you have to escape the maze before your nightmare ends) so strategy and precision control are musts.

Occasionally, to help you keep going, a cup of black coffee appears and collecting this not only adds a few seconds to your life but also freezes the monsters so that you can rush round and gather lots of keys.

Nightmare Maze has some pretty nice graphics and the 3D effect is fairly good. Your enemies float above the ground and cast a shadow, and the puff of smoke which appears when you die hovers quite convincingly. Colour is used quite effectively and despite fairly small characters the general effect is pleasing. Sound isn't too impressive and neither is control - directions are described as 'up-left', 'up-right' etc.

On a joystick you can overcome the difficulties by turning the joystick around, but on the keyboard you run into real problems. This is something you come up against in all Q*Bert-style games, but it never seems to get any easier.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't think Nightmare Maze was that impressive and MRM, although they've included a number of nice touches (such as the floating assailants and the cup of coffee), seem to have forgotten that originality is the name of the best games these days and we won't be fobbed off with rehashes.

Well, it is a bit like a bad dream - one horrible experience just leads straight on to another. It's only got four screens and types of monster, but this isn't really a great drawback since it will take quite some time to master even the first two. The diagonal controls were usually responsive and the 60 second time limit added an extra element of excitement.

The presentation is great, the animation is far better, good title page, sound on/off, quit option, freeze option, different baddies for each screen, good sound effects and a complete and utter loony storyline. All time, at an incredibly low price of £5.70, mean it's a good buy.

If you have nightmares, play this. It's a great game with a brilliant idea behind it, but it has very bad keyboard controls. These took a long time to get used to and I think it's a shame that such a brilliant game should be spoiled by such a minor thing.

The graphics were superb and the game was worth playing just to see them.