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If, to you, bathtime means a bottle of Matey, a plastic boat and crinkly figures, then it's time to hang up your loofah and think again.

Bubble Trouble claims to offer all the fun you can have in the bathroom (Well, most of it anyway) without getting so much as a toe wet. The blurb goes: "The fun takes place in the bath (Doesn't it always?) where you, a small bubble, must increase your size, enabling you to float to freedom.

The screen shows a sort of cross-sectional view of the bath. If you don't see what I mean, imagine a 6ft wide TV screen running down the middle of your bath and you will get the picture.

So you are in complete control of this bubble which happily floats around the screen, sorry, water. What you have to do is munch all these smaller bubbles that appear at the bottom (know what I mean?) and rise to the surface. If you manage to munch 10 bubbles you rise to the surface and disappear through the air vent, only to appear on the next highest level.

There are a few nice touches. At the beginning of the game the plug falls into the plug hole and the tap fills the bath with water accompanied by some well realistic sound (Bath water is pretty easy to do). There's also a rubber duck which floats around on top of the water.

Of course, all of this would be a bit banal were it not for the spiders, nailbrushes, shampoo and other seemingly innocuous bathroom implements out to get you. You start with a generous five lives so a few scrapes with the nailbrush won't set you back too far.

The most infuriating thing of all is that if you're not too clever at bubble munching, your score ticks back to zero and you have to start again. You get sixty seconds in which to do it, but I found that if you cannot do it in that time you are liable to run out of lives anyhow. If you want to avoid that, I'd suggest you use the keyboard rather than a joystick. Use G and H to go left and right, and SHIFT to go down.

I like Bubble Trouble. There is nothing mega-exciting about it, but it's a cute game, enjoyable to play and, like most of the Players range, good value. Just one thing puzzles me. Where do all those bubbles come from?