Freddy's Folly is one of the latest from the Minerva Archimedes games department. In Freddy, you own one of two castles that are separated by a narrow sea. The other is owned by Sit Freddy Phrogg, who is jealous of your palatial dwelling and intends to destroy it. To thwart the attack - made in hot-air balloons - you have a single cannon mounted on a cart and a three-person crew. But Freddy has pre-empted this and employed several gun-ships, each of which has a go at defacing your battlements. The ships have far more cannons that you do and I fail to understand why they don't all concentrate their efforts on your castle - they'd succeed!

The game uses detailed and picturesque sprites throughout, which are very smartly animated. Not only is the entire framework of the game amusing, but there are many little quirks added too. For example, one of the gunships blew a hole in my cannon's track and, being the clever player I am, I pushed the cannon down the hole. One of the operators fell down with it, so the other two came over and helped him up again!

At the end of the game, a statistic chart is displayed, and the cannon is rolled off while one of the operations juggles with cannon balls. Good fun, but it took me no longer than fifteen minutes to sink all the ships and destroy the balloons. Left with nothing to do, I turned off my Arc and walked away. The game is too simple.

Freddy's Folly is graphically impressive, the sound is good, and the game is highly amusing, but I'm afraid that's all.