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It's no use producing cheap software if the game isn't worth the price of the blank cassette. But that's what Pulsonic has done with this program for the Spectrum. It's a very simple game, written entirely in Spectrum Basic. Mainly for this reason, it's very slow. There's not much movement and hardly any sound effects.

You play the part of a worm and you have to crawl round the garden eating food but avoiding the rocks. As you eat more food, so you grow longer. If you hit a rock, then you lose one of your five lives. You also lose a life if you run either into your own body or hit the side of the screen. The food is made up of white crosses on-screen, while the rocks are black blobs.

The only movement on-screen is the worm itself, which is very slow because of the limitations of Spectrum Basic. Each time you eat some food, the machine beeps. You also get a different beep when you have no more lives left.

Apart from the game being far too slow, response from the keyboard is too sluggish as well. You have to keep your finger on the key for some time before it registers. This makes it rather hard to dodge awkward rocks.

There's one good feature about a game written in Basic, though. You can change it. The first thing I did was to alter the keys which you use to control the worm. I still can't get used to using the four cursor keys and, while I was about it, I gave myself some more lives too.

Once you have cleared a sheet and eaten all the food in the garden, you are rewarded with... another sheet! And so this goes on. Whether you'll be able to stand playing this long enough to use up all your five lives, I don't know. I found it hard at times.

This game is badly written and too slow. It may be cheap, but it's still worth nowhere near £2.95.

If you have £3 to spare, but a few blank cassettes and try typing in some of the programs from C&VG instead.