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While a lone spaceship drifts aimlessly through space, you try in desperation to fulfil your mission: to save your alien race by getting ten pods into the incubators dotted around the ship. But the ship's hundreds of colourful screens are packed with lovable - and some not-so-lovable - aliens.

By pressing SPACE you can call up a status mode, which reports on your Force and Attack powers and the number of pods left. If you run low on Force and Attack, they can be topped up by dropping the pods in the incubators or by eating the small engineers who trundle around the ship mending things.

The ship consists of 142 areas divided into four zones, which are connected by a network of lifts, doors and air vents. But inside the air vents lurk small flying aliens which can only be dodged by hanging onto the ceiling -just hold tight till the danger has passed.

On entering a lift, your alien undergoes a metamorphosis and becomes an array of dots. These dots can be guided up or down to access any level. Once there, a simple left or right movement gets you back to the action.

Play techniques include ducking before you jump - this lets you jump higher and avoid awkward jutting obstructions. And your defence methods include spitting paralysing acid.

But don't forget: aliens don't like to be provoked!

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: Cute and well- defined; colour is used effectively, though there's some clash
Sound: Beepy FX but a good title tune

The graphics are really good: there's loads of colour and the characters are defined nicely. But I'm simply not impressed by Survivor. There's not enough gameplay, and it grows boring very after the pleasant teleporting effects and the neat presentation, play is a real letdown. Somebody's worked hard at this, but I'm afraid...

I'm pleasantly surprised by Survivor. There's been no hype, no freebies and no great build-up - so US Gold has actually spent some time creating a decent and playable game. The best thing in Survivor is the astounding graphics. The ship deck is intricately detailed and complemented well by some simple but colourful platform-type graphics. And I loved little features such as spitting acid at the enemy, the Star Trek-like lifts and the babies crawling on the floor. It's very playable, mostly addictive and well worth a fiddle.

At first this didn't appeal to me, but after exploring for a while and mastering the controls I'm addicted. The play area is massive and the graphics are top quality, despite some colour clash. There are some neat touches, like teleports and air vents, and the programmers must have a really sick sense of humour - who'd think of eating little engineers?! US Gold should have a hit with Survivor, the most addictive game I've played recently.