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Paradroid confirms the emergence of Hewson's Andrew Braybrook as one of Britain's most exciting C64 programmers. His previous game, Gribbly's Day Out, was packed with entertaining, original gameplay and this one, although extremely different, is just as classy.

The action takes place on board a 'galactic space freighter', a craft made of twenty different decks, each viewed from above through a smooth-scrolling window. The total playing area is apparently equivalent to some 400 screens.

You have control (joystick only) over a droid which has been beamed onto the ship for the delightful purpose of eliminating the craft's entire robot crew - they've mutinied so they deserve it, right?

Part of the game simply involves gliding around the decks blasting everything that moves. Even if that were all it wouldn't be bad, because the control feels superb - super-smooth with a nice inertial effect - and the graphics, although fairly simple, have a cool, modern look to them. The sound too, is effective and atmospheric.

But there's much more. The enemy robots are far more powerful than your droid, and in order to make any real progress you have to transfer control to one of these. Achieving this is a separate game in its own right. First you must ram the robot you want to transfer to. The screen then switches to a pleasing little strategy game-cum-shoot out, in which you must try to gain control of the robot's circuitry by sending pulses down carefully-selected wires.

If you succeed, you have control over the new robot, complete with its superior fire-power and can continue until energy runs low and you need to upgrade again.

Once all the robots on one deck have been wiped out you can move to another using one of the many lifts which interlink them. The types of robot vary throughout the ship - there are 24 different categories, some much faster and deadlier than others. You can get information on any less powerful than the one you're controlling by accessing the Droid Data Library via one of the many deck consoles.

Another example of the program's imaginative attention to detail is the way your energy is revealed - not by the usual gauge or counter, but by the speed at which your robot rotates. All in all, an addictive shoot-'em-up which looks and feels superb.