I can't help feeling that jigsaw puzzles are getting dangerously close to being museum pieces. Sure, they were suited to the days when people had nothing better to do with their leisure hours than listen to grim radio broadcasts, play cards, read books and generally 'make their own entertainment', but today? Somehow arranging colourful and eccentric shapes in the correct order looks rather less than thrilling.

The whole idea of jigsaws seems even sorrier - if that's possible - on computer. Like last month's Tangram, it's a form that works perfectly using little bits of wood or cardboard - it's hard to see what you gain by putting the action onto a computer screen.

Actually, it's not that hard to see as such - fairly obviously, the pictures you build up are animated, hence the 'living' part - it's just hard to understand. Is seeing a rather sugary view of a hot air balloon floating over an English landscape, or watching an ugly dinosaur's last moments in the locality of a seriously irate volcano, really enough to justify spending £25? Pleasingly, each individual piece is actually animated too, meaning objects passing through the main screen will also appear on loose pieces. This isn't especially useful, but it is a kinda neat technie trick.

The game works like this. You've got a dozen picture puzzles, and using the mouse you've got to move pieces from the storage screen to the puzzle screen, then place them the correct way round and in the right place. Each puzzle can be 'cut-up' any way you like from a selection of different styles of piece, and there's a selection of four difficulty levels, based mainly around how large and numerous the bits are. Manipulating the difficulty factor of the puzzles isn't the only 'advantage' Living Jigaws has over table-top versions. You can also cheat. Pressing certain keys will actually place the pieces correctly, with the aid of a 'Help Elf', though why you'd want to do this I don't know - it rather defeats the object of the game. Still, it's not something you need to waste much time worrying about - unless you're a bit simple you won't by laying out a whopping £25 for such as this.

Quickly, then, two reasons why this is not a wise purchase:

1. Computer jigsaws as a concept are unbelievably limited and a bit of a non-starter really.

2. This isn't even a good computer jigsaw game - it's slow, primitive, and lacks any charm or wit whatsoever.

I could imagine someone under the age of six gleaning a smattering of fun from the pretty pictures, but little more than they'd enjoy from a normal jigsaw. The Amiga was made for better things - methinks this jigsaw puzzle should have been left in its box.

A wrong-headed attempt to bring an unsuitable pastime to the Amiga. Badly executed from the start - it would probably be scorned by jigsaw fans - but perhaps an entertaining alternative to shoot-'em-ups for the very young.