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Every now and then comes a game with a certain something. Don't Press The Letter Q is one of them. It's simple, but invokes a love-hate relationship between player and program.

You know you've got something weird from the inlay: "I set the computer to add 'games' to the pathways. With sinister speed and efficiency it created dozens of video games with hundreds of variations and deviations."

When you load the game its strangeness is immediate: "Do you like the bomm song?" it asks. Actually, that's just for the background music. "Do you want to play the standard pathways?" is harder to answer at first.

As far as I can make out, the goal is to achieve 30,000 points, when there may or may not be a nice surprise. It's easiest to see the game as several games, linked by passageways. Once you've entered one, you must win it to move on. The inlay says there are 35 different video games of over 5,000 types, but you'd be a fool to imagine each game is very different. There are 30 beacons in the pathways, but as with the rules for most of this game, you'll have to work out their significance for yourself.

Some of the offerings are a bit simple: for instance, there's one screen where you and another shape move round leaving a trail. If you can force the other shape into a closed area so it's got nowhere to move, you win. Easy.

Then there are Pac-man variants. In one of these you and two ghosts roam a maze littered with power pills. Gobble pills for points, avoid the ghosts and when they're all gone it's on to the next.

Sounds simple? Well, some of the variants are much harder and the evil meter counts down to zero at an alarming rate.

Win a screen and the happy meter is reset to zero. Win or lose, the program makes comments like "I spit upon your toenails" or "I mildly dislike your play". Exasperating at first, but they soon degenerate rapidly to mildly annoying.

Don't Press Q is wacky, difficult and totally addictive.