I can remember some time ago now, peering down a microscope in the biology laboratory at school and watching amoebae swimming around aimlessly, occasionally absorbing some tasty piece of material that happened to float their way. Home Base is a bit like that, only the amoebae are renamed laser balls, and you control a laser dome that moves amongst them, firing to the left and right.

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A joystick is used to control movement, and it is important to avoid touching the laser balls, as your energy level drops when this happens. You have three domes to start with, and in the slow version of the game you can hide in the home base until there is a space to move in. The time you can remain in the home base is limited, and in the fast version of the game, this option is not even provided.

The playing area is surrounded by a wavy line which increases the similarity to a cellular organism. This proves lethal if you inadvertantly collide with it. After seeing some rather good programs from Cable Software, I was a little disappointed with this game, I wasn't really very impressed with it and I think it would soon become very tedious. The display remains more or less the same throughout the game, and it's not too difficult to avoid the laser balls, even in the fast mode. Once you clear one screen, it fills up with more laser balls, and so on, and so on.

Perhaps I've come to expect too much from Dragon games nowadays, but unless you're heavily into microbiology, Home Base is hardly one you'll come back to again and again.