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In the cold and silent watches of the night, when the rest of us are safely abed, a giant Machine stirs and rumbles into life. It's called the Beast, and its sinister mission is to swamp the world with those awful plastic Star Wars dolls. James Leach applies for the unenviable night shift...

You know what it means to work hard on machines. It's difficult, it's tiring - but it's not boring. Not when you're doing the Night Shift at the giant industrial Might and Logic corporation.

You play either Fred or Fiona Fixit and you've just been hired to tame the Beast - the large machine which churns out little Imperial Stormtrooper dolls as seen in the three Star Wars movies. Such is the demand for these (though why, God only knows!) that the Beast runs all night. And it needs someone to supervise it through the small hours.

Your first task is to get the Beast's powerplant working. This involves pedalling a stationary bicycle connected to the electric system. Then you must whip out a match from your little toolbag and put it to the steam boiler. Now the great Machine rumbles into life, lights start to flash...

But straightaway things aren't going according to plan. Right at the top of the Machine a bolt has come loose. You must scramble up the Machine, get your spanner out and tighten it up. But there's no time to rest. Now you must rush across and connect up the plug of the Raw Materials Machine. Oh, and the paint has gone all wrong! You remix the colours - only to find the boiler's gone out again!

Night Shift is a platform game with ledges, conveyor belts and lifts. Running the Machine is like spinning plates - you dash up and down tending to its every need. Things are always going wrong, and it often takes you a while to get to the spot. You eventually learn the best routes, but come a cropper if you rush.

Other factors keep everything from running smoothly. A lemming called Jodee runs onto the screen and forms an interesting relationship with your foot. This hampers your movement considerably, so you pull a Venus Flytrap from your toolbag and watch as it swallows the poor lovelorn thing. Weird, eh?

By contrast, balloons and umbrellas - both pulled from your toolbox - can come in very useful indeed. The balloon enables you to rise up the side of the Machine effortlessly and the umbrella lets you drop down again. It's possible to clamber around without these, though. Indeed, they're only useful for long journeys, because you still have to get to the exact part of the Beast that's malfunctioning. They do save some time and effort nevertheless.

The effects certainly do the game justice. The Beast is a beautiful piece of engineering and very nicely drawn. It's a six-screen-high symphony of pumping pistons, whirling wheels and flashing lights. Puffs of steam rise, vats bubble and conveyors churn. Heath Robinson would have been proud! The graphics are of carbon quality and incredibly smooth. You send your detailed little character dashing around with the joystick, and it responds quickly and accurately.

It's a shame the sound isn't up to the high standard of the graphics, though. There is a typically annoying little tune but the rhythm of the Machine soothes you after a while. The noise shuts down if you let anything major go wrong - like the boiler going out, for example - so it acts as another warning device.

Night Shift is a novel and fun idea, but ultimately just a variation on the spinning plates theme - the better you get, the more dolls you're asked to make. This limits the game's long-term interest. All you are doing is amassing points in the form of money. If you can make only $150 after an hour's play, and the display can go up to $1 million, then you might want to just give up and go for something your Mum would be proud of - like accountancy.