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Strategy games seem to be catching on at the moment. Stonkers has been selling well and now Beyond Software hopes to emulate Imagine's success with their latest, Psytron. Although thisis another arcade/strategy game, it's nothing like Stonkers - thankfully.

Psytron itself is the defence system of the Betula 5 installation. The Psytron scans for oncoming intruders, tracks down potential saboteurs and generally makes the world a safer place in which to live.

During the game, you take on the role of the Psytron and your objective is to survive the oncoming attacks. A lot of strategic planning is involved and a game can take quite a long time to play.

It's not words-only, it's graphics based, and very impressive they are too. The installation can be viewed from ten different viewpoints and the graphic representation on each is superb. Only two colours are used, but this is the only possible way round the Spectrum's limit on colour resolution.

There are six levels to the game, and the idea is to survive for a certain amount of time at each level while also achieving a sufficiently high score. You can't progress to a level until you have succeeded at the one before it. Because of this, and to save experienced players having to complete the early levels each time they play the game, you can save scores to tape and continue with the save game another day. In fact, you can save the five highest scores so far, so you can select your best efforts.

Level one is fairly straightforward. As controller of the Pursuit Droid on a mission from the Psytron, you must seek and destroy the alien saboteurs which are being beamed down into the installation's service tunnels in the airlocks. You can see the three-legged aliens crawling through the tunnels on the main screen and you're also given a close-up view of the area in a small window in a corner. By level four, you will have to send in repair crews to patch up the damage caused.

Level two has you patrolling the skies above. The game still takes place on the same set of graphics screens, but uses a different area. Your ultimate objective again is accurate firing and surviving for a certain fixed time limit.

Level six, the final conflict, asks you to survive for an hour. Achieving this goal has two advantages. First, you can tell your friends that you've just finished level six of Psytron. Second, if they're not suitably impressed, then tell them that you now qualify to win a QL if you're the first to have finished the game. This really make them green...

If you're a fan of this type of game, then you'll love Psytron. It's certainly complicated and you'll have to come back to it quite often if you've any hance of winning the QL. (Let's just hope that Clive can actually deliver the goods before someone wins it!)

All the normal features are here - sound effects and joystick options. The 20-page manual tells you almost everything you need to know, but it let down by some awful grammar and spelling. The important facts are correct, though.

It's well worth the £9.95 asking price but - be warned - it's not a game which you will conquer in a single sitting.