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Harold is a hedgehog. As winter comes, so he must prepare for hibernation by collecting food which lies in the chambers underneath the hedgerows.

There are 57 different chambers to explore with one item of food or drink in each. (I wonder if one of the items is a tin of beans?) Having collected his food, Harold must then find his den for the winter. As Ian McCaskill has predicted a sharp frost, the entire task must be completed within 24 hours.

The most unusual feature of this platform game is that you start with an incredible 19 lives. My initial reaction on seeing this was to think that the programmers must have made the game too difficult, but it is not too bad.

The hardest part to get used to is the height that Harold can leap - huge distances compared to other games - and so your lives soon diminish as you leap into unsuspecting wasps, ghosts, worms, snails and other nasty inhabitants of the cave system. There is no set route for you to take; you can explore at will as you seek out food and coins which give you extra lives. Some of the rooms contain glasses of wine instead of food and the effect of Harold drinking these is, not surprisingly, to make him drunk - nicely depicted by reversing the joystick controls.

Spiky Harold is a pleasant enough game to play, although it can hardly be said to be addictive. Still, if you play platform games, this will give you a fair old challenge for your money.