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The cosmic energy grid is a mean place. It's sort of square shaped, with lots of little squares inside, and getting across it is a difficult business, especially if you're a service droid with a defective bounce.

Parabola is a game with a lot of square things, some round things, and a thing that bounces up and down a lot. It's a really exciting game, as you can imagine. The action takes place on individual squares of the energy grid. Which are sub-divided into squares. Old Brucie has to bounce across this square, picking up some things and avoiding other things, thus reaching the exit and, you've guessed it the next square.

Anyway, all these squares aside, there are, as I said, some found buts as well, some of which are good, and some of which are bad. The good ones are the whirly things, which are energy discs, and Bruce has to collect all the discs on a square before he can leave. But watch out for the non-whirly ejector pads.

I'm terribly impressed by Parabola. Springy androids are all very well, and this is a springy android with at least some measure of cuteness about him. He bounces up and down nicely, his spring appears to bend in an authentic sort of way. He even makes twangs when he hits the ground.

Unless my copy of Parabola is strange and I'm totally misjudging it. Parabola is not really up to scratch. It's too hard to move about the grid, and the rewards are not worth the effort. OK, so the screen flashes lots of pretty colours at you when you get through a square, and you get some bonus points and there's lots of twangy sounds like lots of little Bruce's all jumping up and down in glee, but so what? Sorry Firebird, but this one's a dodo.

Boring bouncy thing and lots of squares. Not worth springing out of bed to go and buy it. (Joke, get it?)