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Trentor, space trader and merchant extraordinaire, is two days out from Epsilon Dock with a full cargo of gold nuggets, raw fuel and priceless booster spice. Armed only with an atom blaster, credit card, notepad and pen, Trentor makes his living by flitting between the six moons of his home world Meridien, swapping fuel for food for narcotics for statues for...

You can try your own luck as a space trader in this three-part space adventure from Pixel, marketed by Quicksilva.

You are in charge of a cargo spaceship. You have a little money, or credits, and your task is to exchange the credits for goods on one moon and visit the others, trading as you go.

The part of the trader is played by one person, but two could co-operate on decision-making. You have little control over the action, and must cope with the sort of activities you've come to expect from a computer, including quizzes, graphic action and strategy.

Your objectives are to return to the main port of Epsilon, and to come back with more credits than you started with.

The cassette comes in a large box, together with an eight page booklet giving instructions, and a story about Trentor's adventures with the statue-collecting Alphans and pet-loving Psions.

You get a short loading test which tells you what to do next, and the instructions are straightforward. Loading the first part of the game took a good six minutes on my ZX81.

At the start of the game, you are at Epsilon Dock and have 1,000 credits. You must buy a tankful of fuel for your hopper - enough to get you to your next landfall.

Now is also the time to spend your credits on stock of as many commodities as you can afford. Choose from such treasures as Petrochem, munch (a food that comes in sweet red or savoury green varieties), synthomunch, another foodstuff (disgusting to eat, but highly nutritious and cheap), booster spice (a narcotic with unpredictable side-effects), gold and raw fuel.

But don't go for just one commodity - not even the entrancing boosterspice - or you could lose the game fast.

Now you must travel, and trade. You go to Psi first, but be warned, the inhabitants will look down on you, and will try to humiliate you - they scorn your materialistic lifestyle.

"Use your calculator if necessary," the game instructions advise. "They can't think any less of you."

A calculator, pen and paper really are needed to keep track of your changing cargo and the number of credits you have, or you owe. Without these aids you'll be thrown into a panic the first few times you play. There are different things to do on all five moons, and just getting to them is a major exercise in itself.

You must battle against gravity on your approach to Beta, work out your angle of approach to Alpha and steer clear of Gamma's sky-high radiation levels.

You are kept in touch with developments by several sentences of background material at each event. But even if you go through the game several times, you still have to sit through all that background, as there is no way of turning it off.

Twice you are left in suspense while you LOAD parts two and three, but these breaks in play are useful, as playing time for the whole game runs to around 15 minutes - unless you are killed.

As a trading simulation, this game is quite good, but does have limitations. You have no choice about the moons you visit, or the order in which you visit them. The prices at which you buy and sell and the unexpected events you encounter are all random.

As a result, after you've played two or three times, you will have a good idea of what to expect, though there will still be some surprises even after ten games or more.

What with letting your friends play, not to mention your parents or children, I think the game should retain some interest for several months. But for just one player, I expect it would last maybe a dozen plays.