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Out of all the mags who reviewed the original Amiga version of Benefactor, getting on for a year ago, there were only two who actually liked it. And we were one of them. Appreciating its qualities, you see, is not quite as clear-cut as with something like Theme Park, or The Chaos Engine; in fact on first sight it looks a bit... well, cack.

It's a platform game, of sorts, but the characters are incredibly tiny; almost Lemmings-y. The backgrounds are mostly brown, at least at first, the sound effects are sparse, and the music is a cheesy pastiche on the sort of thing you'd hear in a Little Chef. So, simply put, (Hurrah! - Harry.) Benefactor isn't appealing at first glance.

However, lil' Ben does have one important thing going for him: gameplay. Levels covering such glorious and imaginative areas as Ice World, Egypt World, Forest World and... er, some others, contain a number of puzzles linked to releasing a number of small people (called Merry Men) from their cells on a distant, nasty planet. Each level has a certain number of Merry Men to free, and given that you need a key to free each one, you can probably guess that... yes, the puzzles are linked to the keys!

Joystick/joypad incompetents probably won't get very far with the game at all, because the platform-based puzzles invariably involve leaping over some pixel-perfect chasm or other, and often amiss can mean the loss of a life, and the beginning of the level once again. However, this is countered because the Merry Men are actually programmed to help you out - so although there aren't any specific instructions for each level, the Merries know exactly what they need to do to escape.

And all you have to do is follow them - but beware, not all of the Merry Men are exactly merry, if you know what I mean...

Benefactor is not only the second CD32 game from Psygnosis in a month, but more importantly it's the second decent game. It's cheaper than the other, Flink, and indeed because of Psygnosis' deal with Future Zone it's actually £15 cheaper than the floppy version. If the simple-looking graphics and naff tunes don't put you off, there's a clever puzzle game waiting for you underneath