Snip Software is a new name to Dragon Owners, its first releases are both card games, namely Craps and Pontoon - the latter is reviewed here.

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Cecil Plays 21 is a faithful reproduction of the game of Pontoon with a few extras added. The program, which is written in Basic, autoruns on loading and after several title screens, some in high resolution graphics, gives brief instructions on how to play.

The graphics involved in the game range from good to disappointing - all the cards are displayed using low resolution chunky graphics and text, however there is a nice picture of Cecil P Dragon - your opponent in the card game. Cecil appears after each game either grinning or frowning depending on whether he has won or lost.

Achieving the magic 21 causes a different hi-res display to be shown. The game is very simple to operate, you simply enter your stake and press "T" to twist or "S" to stick.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a few bugs in the program. An ace can count as one or eleven in pontoon, but Cecil always uses it as eleven which means he sometimes "busts" below 21.

Another, more serious, oversight is that the cards always appear in exactly the same order after loading the game. This is because the autorun routine used resets the random number seeds that the program uses, and the program doesn't bother to randomize these at the start of each game. Obviously, after a while you get to know the pattern of cards which defeats the object of the game.

At £4.95 this piece of software is one of the cheapest around, but don't expect to get anything stunning for that price.