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The editor would not let me use the word "unprintable" to describe this game so I will have to make do with eeeeuch! (That exclamation mark was done with feeling folks). It is very similar to another game that will be reviewed next month. I won't tell you which one, you can guess.

The whole game is absolutely abysmal.

It is written in BASIC and protected so that you can't look at it, but why you should, I do not know. This obviously cannot be written by the usual farmyard of programmers at Kuma. who have produced such excellent games as Fruity Frank and Star Avenger. The programmer responsible for this crock of fertilizer clearly cannot program even in BASIC and ought to be dropped by Kuma or, failing that, shot.

The game itself is sixteen blocks long with no loader screen. After loading, it gets its data sorted out and asks you to engage the caps lock. Have these people never heard of the UPPER$ function in BASIC? Still, you move on and are asked if you want the instructions.

When you get on to the game, you discover that it is about as user-friendly as an income tax form and as exciting as the contents of a ping-pong ball. Oh yes, there are pictures in it. Awful blocky things which take ages to draw and tend to look much the same anyway.

To get anywhere at all in this game, you must first buy various vital stores, This is supposedly accomplished by typing, say, OXYGEN followed by a number of carriage returns depending on how many you want. No chance: that will teach you not to believe everything you read. In actual fact it says you can't OXYGEN", Undaunted, I typed: BUY OXYGEN. Better: my oxygen level went up one. Ah! Now should I hit return. No, it helpfully says that I can't.

This means that I had to type the same thing in half a dozen times, which wears a little on the patience. Whilst I am knocking the verbage side of things, it is very fussy about which words you use. For example: you must type in BUY FUEL OIL. Typing BUY FUEL or BUY OIL gets a "you can't buy..." message!

This game would not even make a bad magazine listing. As a commercial piece of software it plumbs new shallows.