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Even the toughest starship captain has to take time off now and again. And you're heading for a long-deserved break in your one man Fribble leisure craft. It's second hand (well, tentacle), but the salesthing assured you that the little old Vogon that had owned it before had only used it to go to the abbatoir every second Sunday.

You had assured him that should the craft be in anything less than tip-top condition he himself would need a second hand to replace any parts of anatomy that might just go missing.

But it looks like you'll never be able to carry out that threat, as your inertial stabilisers cut out just above an emerald planet. Frantically battling with the controls, you manage to get a quick scan of your prospective grave before you black out.

You didn't expect to survive, but you have. Running through the computer log you find that the Fribble has survived too, but during the descent it shed nine small but important bits, The scan you took shows that these bits are scattered among some 40 billion locations. And there's nothing for it but to find them.

From your now-sessile Fribble you extract a jet pack, nine radio beacons and the direction finder to go with them, nine anti-grav drones to ferry stuff back to base, sonar, laser gun and some truly invaluable jungle boots.

All around you the jungle stands, mysterious, majestic and utterly uninviting. Nothing to frighten the warrior who, single-handedly, routed Roland's Rascals, mashed the Mavericks of Marcon IV and ground the Great Galactic Grunge into grouting. Unfortunately, he's light years away. So you're frightened.

Your sonar reveals an object miles away, on a bearing of 134. It might just be a bit of Fribble, and it's as good a place as any to start. So off you trudge. On your way, you notice huge symmetric mounds looming behind the giant palm-tree like plants that make up most of the vegetative scenery.

At your destination, you're confronted with a swirling patch of colour. Cautiously you enter it. Somewhere, deep in your mind, a voice asks you for your destination. You mumble a word, and find yourself thousands of miles away.

Not much nearer any lumps of Fribble, but it's certainly quicker than Shank's pony. Mind you, you've always got the jetpack, but that's best for taking sightings from 2000 feet. And it uses up energy like it was going out of fashion... which it is. You have to watch those ergs as they drip away.

Beacons can be dropped anywhere to help you map the place out with a bit of triangulation. It's during a fix that you become aware that the vanished civilisation which created the colourful matter transmitters also had a natty line in robotic bugs.

If you don't get to them with your laser before they get to you with their teeth (ahem) you can say goodbye to any hope of that reconstruction work you've got planned for that second-hand sales thing. And it's that which drives you forwards through the vast tracts of unmapped foliage more than anything. That Fribble dealer's got a lot coming to him... if you make it.

Games which offer things like 40 billion locations always strike me as playing the maths game. A bit like a car which can do 0 to 60 in four seconds but couldn't corner for toffee.

They usually have 40 billion locations - all of them boring. Explorer is different, the locations need to be there to make getting from A to B that bit harder.

The graphics are good, with shades of the early Interceptor adventures. The falling towards the planet scene deserves a special mention.

This is an odd game and I don't think I like it, Some people enjoy running round forests in the name of sport, I don't.

I admire the program for it's technical brilliance and the amount of work which has obviously gone into it, but that does not mean I'd buy it.

Perhaps the Electric Dreams style of thinking games is just too much for me.

Now here's a strange beast. At first it doesn't look much, with a lot of wandering about in a Mode 1 landscape to no immediate effect.

The few gimmicks incorporated into the game in an effort to make it seem like more than a hide-and-seek tend to jar (the shoot-the-bug bit being exceptionally laughable); only the DFing of beacons is any great use.

The pictures of the jungle. slow and laborious though they be, make the game worthwhile. Impressionistic, repetitious and tantalising, they fit in very well with my fantasies of exploring a mystery planet.

They might leave you stone cold, but I love 'em. How does one score a game like this?