An eleven-legged flea controlling a metallic spheroid is what your role is in Overload - well, at least that's what the instructions tell you. In fact, you only get to see the sphere itself.

The bare bones of the game is a number of screens on which you can find a number of nasties. Killing these before a timer runs out results in you moving on to the next level.

The nasties are killed by bouncing the sphere on top of them. There is a specific order in which the nasties must be killed, the next one to get is indicated by a small square just above it. If you land on one out of sequence, it may split into two smaller nasties, making life more difficult.

The sphere bounces the whole time. The height of the bounce remains unchanged, unless the user presses Return. If this is done while the sphere is rising, the height of the bounce increases. Conversely, when the ball is falling the bounce height decreases. This system is quite irritating since once the bounce gets too low, you can't judge when to press Return to increase it again.

Pretty patterned backgrounds are used to cover most of the screen, similar to those found in Arkanoid. In the foreground there are thin walls on which the nasties wander. Some of the backgrounds are particularly well designed, as indeed are the nasties.

The sphere itself is not a bad representation of a steel ball and it is accompanied by a good 'boing' sound effect.

There are a few nice touches to be found. At the start of each game there is a very effective digitised thunderstorm. I also liked the motion of the nasties down the sloping walls.

It would be unfair to say that Overload was a bad game. It is playable but I certainly would not class it as a 'mega game', as the blurb on the packet would have you believe. One thing is for sure, it definitely doesn't overload the Arcs capabilities.