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Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's a spring - Ziggy, the unlikely new star from Audiogenic. The first, I suspect, in a run of the new style of 3D arcade adventures.

The screen is laid out in a style known as oblique projection, where horizontal lines are rotated 45 degrees to the horizontal.

If you can say that while standing on your head with a disc drive between your teeth, then you're half way to getting somewhere in Ziggy, which has got to qualify as one of the trickiest games yet.

You start in fine style, with the little spring bouncing merrily around level zero collecting the crystals, one in each of the four rooms. At this stage it takes no more than a little thought to collect all four jewels.

Then it's on to the up square for the second level and beyond. Until level four it's straightforward but then things start to get hectic. Patches of glue and skulls start to get in your way and you have to increase bounce speed and distance to leap over them.

All this effort drains life force at an alarming rate and if you keep it up for too long, it's curtains.

Graphically speaking, Ziggy is not very spectacular.

Although the characters are nice and chunky, the playing area is in two colours, and even though these vary from level to level, the effect is still rather drab.

Sadly it gets worse, the animation is jerky and the key response irritatingly sluggish. This is a pity because it detracts from what essentially is a very enjoyable game.

One feature I was pleased to see was a screen designer, so that, even if you can't complete the 200 rooms supplied, you can at least define your own. And just for a change, there's a natty little tune that won't drive you round the bend because you can turn it off.

Ziggy is the type of game that you'll either love or hate. So I strongly recommend that you try it first.

Julia Forester