It's nice to see that Mastertronic are turning their hands to the distribution of software for Vic-20 owners. At the £1.99 price, this has got to be good news for a great many people.

The author of this program has obviously played that well known masterpiece Boulder Dash since this game has many similar elements. You have 20 caves to tackle. The eight pieces of an amulet in each cave must be collected before you move onto the next cave. Within each cave are rocks embedded in a matrix of earth. As you dig through the earth, the rocks will tumble, crushing you if you get in the way. Also lurking in the caves are purple figures which will grab you given half a chance and skulls which have a similar inclination.

I must give full marks to the author of this program. The game uses an expanded screen and to fit 20 screens into an unexpanded VIC must have been a bit of a challenge. The graphics are as good as the VIC can offer with passable animation and colour. The behaviour of the rocks is occasionally a little haphazard but with practice this can be overcome. Better attention to detail would have been helpful since the game often started with you being adjacent to a purple nasty with instant death resulting. I also wonder how many of the random layouts of the amulet pieces were actually possible to complete.

Notwithstanding these minor quibbles, a great game.

M.W.