Sticking the brick in

The aim in this arcade-style game is to trap monsters by pushing brick walls around to box them in, and then finally to squash them. Any contact with these beasts causes a loss of life. It's a simple theme, but difficult enough to make it surprisingly compelling.

Let's start with the bad news. My copy of the program came on what looked like a 90 minute cassette. The first five minutes seemed to be blank and on first trying to load the program I was very put out. Even on a budget-priced game, the customer deserves a tape of a suitable length and quality.

Now to the game itself. You must first enter a difficulty level - level one gives fairly slow monsters, while on level six they move a bit too rapidly.

In the first room there is just one nasty, but even he is quite hard to trap because he can sneak through corners where you can't. Speed is needed to get a high score since only a few points are scored for actually trapping the monster and lots are added by a time bonus. You gain an extra life once you have amassed 4,000 points.

Guaranteed to have you playing again and again is the time limit against which each screen must be completely cleared.

In room two there are two monsters which can cause panic to set in, and rooms three and four each add extra monsters to make things worse. The final two rooms never have more than four of the little demons on screen, but if you trap one, another is born.

The game has a couple of nice touches. The meanies are utter sadists who grin from ear to ear if they catch you, and the high score table keeps a record ofthe selected level of difficulty.

This game is addictive and fun to play and well worth the asking price as long as you are prepared to gamble with tape quality.

Rog Frost