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The one thing about this game which I haven't been able to work out is why it is called Sim. After that challenging puzzle, the game seems more than a little dull in comparison.

The game has everything a good software company should try to cram into one of their programs. Good colour graphics and smoothly animated graphics abound in hundreds of games I could name, not least in Viper Software's Sim.

And that's exactly the problem. Every software baron and his cat are always on the lookout for a quick way to make a few bucks. Recently a large part of the industry has been on a "state of the art graphics" trip, totally forgetting that there's more involved in making a good game than how appealing it looks.

Theme, playability, ingenuity and innovative style have all been thrown out of the window during the latest fad for the game with the cutest graphics. A good game, in my opnion, must have a well thought out and strong plot or theme and excellent playability as well as interesting and realistic graphics.

Sim shows every sign of the new direction that a lot of software companies are taking. The character that you fly about the maze is difficult to control and the layout of the game is so badly designed that you die every time you enter a new screen.

At the beginning of last year, Sim would have stood a chance of impressing people but the game market has moved on a lot since then and I'm afraid that companies like Viper won't last if they don't rethink their approach.