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Described as the ultimate maze challenge, Xor has been delighting and frustrating Beeb owners for many months. Now Xor is available for the C64 and Atari ST.

The game consists of 15 graded mazes, each more cunning than the last. By completing each of the first fourteen mazes, you will get fourteen letters that form an anagram. But all is not as it seems as these letters are also coded, thus perhaps A=E or C=H. It is only by completing the final maze, that the code is revealed, giving you a chance to solve the anagram.

In each maze, you control two shields, that can be moved under certain conditions, dictated by the other elements in the maze.

Each shield starts in a different part of the maze, and you often have to bring the two together, so that they can work in harmony to solve some of the trickier logic problems.

Your task is the same in all the mazes, and requires you to collect every mask of Xor you find. This may sound easy, but with the exception of maze number one, it requires ever increasing powers of logical deduction as you progress through the game.

Some of the elements in the mazes include ducks, that will always move towards the left when they are free to do so, and fish that will always drop downwards - the vertical equivalent to ducks!

There are also bombs that can be dropped on other maze elements, causing a digitised, three block wide, explosion. It is bital to master the use of the bombs, because it is all too easy to blow up a mask by mistake.

Other mazes are populated by weightless dolls that can be pushed in any direction, and all contain blocks that can only be passed through in certain directions.

The graphics, and movement in Xor, are rather similar to Boulder Dash, but any real similarity between the two games ends here. As you move about the maze, the screen follows you, scrolling as you reach the edges of the game window.

To the right of the window is a smaller map display which is empty at the start of the maze. Later, you will find tokens, each containing information for one quarter of the maze, which is now displayed in the map window.

The map shows the maze walls together with all the masks yet to be collected.

Below the map window is the status window where you can see which shield you are controlling as well as the moves taken so far, and the number of shields collected.

Although there is no limit, each maze must be completed in less than 2001 moves, no mean task in the higher mazes where there is very little margin for deviating off the best route.

This is the definitive maze and problem-solving game, and will certainly appeal to anyone who revels in a challenge, even the most committed arcader.