Keeping a bounce ahead

Being used to seeing serious packages like Artisan from Clares, I was most intrigued to see a review copy of an arcade game. From the instructions, it seems to be a simple bug-blatting exercise.

The story, suitably tongue in cheek, is that you have to mop up an odd collection of nasties accidently created by Igor. The novelty being that you bounce around as an 11-legged flea. Be warned that it isn't as easy as it first looks.

On booting up you are presented with an attractive screen at which you can change the sound volume and enter passwords once you discover them.

When you get into the game you will find avaguely familiar set of bugs to deal with and your flea seems to have lost all its legs and become aball. You bounce around and have to eliminate the bugs one at atime in the right order.

It's fairly easy to avoid the wrong bugs on the first screen - but this only lulls you into a false sense of security for the second. Should you manage to bump into a wrong one you won't like it - in fact you might think that you are seeing double, because it splits into two.

In order to negotiate the maze-like layout and reach the nasties before the time limit runs out you use Z and X for bounce direction and Return for the additional height.

This last gave me alot of trouble and definitely is a knack. Timing is critical as you have to press while bouncing upward to increase height and vice-versa. That I could live with, but at times it seems to work in reverse and I'm still not too sure why.

To add to the difficulty some screens provide only limited horizontal flooring and you can fall through the bottom and appear at the top.

Boasting 60 screens, Overload is very difficult and it's only with great patience that Igot through the first three. Your time limit on the second is so short in relation to the diffi culty that it is only possible to get through if you make no mistakesat all.

Graphics are detailed but not exceptional. While the sprites move smoothly, the backgrounds are simple coloured patterns and the maze layout is more or less a wire frame. So it's not surprising that the screens look crowded.

The mixture of sampled and synthesised sound is good. When you begin it sounds that there's a party going on - presumably the bugs having ahigh old time. These same bugs explode quite satisfying when you land on them and your bounce has anice springy twang to it. Success on a screen is welcomed by a fanfare.

Games of this type need to be finely balanced between frustration and difficulty. If the balance is right, you will have an addictive game. Unfortunately, on this occasion Ithink that the authors have made it slightly too difficult. It seems that a lot of effort is expended to squash a relatively small number of bugs.

Terry Blunt