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Exploding penguins can mean only one thing - a Batman 2 game, right? Wrong. Simon pulls on his fur-lined parka and braves the Antarctic conditions.

According to the sort of people who spend their lives studying these things, there are only four or five different dramatic plots. Every story ever told, written, sung, performed, tapped out in Morse code or whatever, is, when boiled down to its purest elements, just a variation on one of those basic plots - revenge, the quest, the loss, and, er, some others. I reckon computer games are pretty much the same. There are a few pure gameplaying concepts that form the basis of every other game. Tetris is one. Bug Bomber is another.

Bug Bomber is all about a little bloke who runs around a grid strategically planting bombs to kill bugs. Penguin Tower is very much a variation on the concept. You control a bomb-happy parrot, intent on the destruction of level after level of cute penguins. The gameplay is very much the same as Bug Bomber, you have to plant bombs then run like hell in the few seconds you have before they go off.

Of course, penguins aren't the only thing you can blow up, a fact which add greatly to the gameplay. There are two types of obstructing wall; indestructible ones and ones that can be blown up one square at a time. This might not sound any great shakes on the excitement scale but these walls add a lot more to the game than you might think; penguins can be trapped in certain areas, so it can be very important that you don't let them all roam free too early on in tackling a level. There are also eggs on some levels which need to be cordoned off for as long as possible.

So we've got penguins and walls. Oh, and power-ups. These are left behind when you destroy certain walls, and give you various enhanced abilities which are described in loving detail in the Good Fings box-out (I'll leave you to work out what the box-out Not So Good Things is all about!).

I'd love to spend a few more hundred words describing all the other features involved in this game, but there aren't any - it's an incredibly simple concept that just happens to be incredibly good fun.

Of course, life isn't all roses - there's the odd thorn. But then roses have thorns, so perhaps it is all roses. Or perhaps, using a cliche like life isn't all roses was a pretty dumb idea. But you get my drift. As with all games, Penguin Tower has its gameplay flaws, this time in the shape of the penguins. Okay, so you have to have a bad guy for a good plot, and the whole thing would be boring if there wasn't anyone trying to bump you off, but the penguins' motives are never really all that clear - they'll happily wander about the place doing nothing in particular, and they'll probably walk right past you sometimes, but for randomly moving creatures, they really have a knack of hanging around the exact spot you want to walk through yourself.

Then, of course, there are the incredibly fast penguins, who'll randomly bump into you, completely by accident, irritating the hell out of you until you manage to bump them off. There's no real strategy to taking out a penguin moving at twice the speed of sense, you just have to plant as many bombs as you can, find a square where you're safe from the blasts, and hope to God the bionic penguin doesn't get to you before the wick runs out.

The levels themselves haven't exactly been designed with the player in mind, which doesn't really help, as you could really do with a few more narrow passages and places to hide, instead of standing in wide, open spaces, waiting to be killed. One thing the programmers might want to include in the final version would be a level designer, so that everyone who's had it up to the back teeth running round oddly laid-out screens could design their own (or just remove all of the eggs from the original designs).

But the sheer addictiveness of the gameplay wins out over the flaws. Whoever came up with the idea (though it wasn't exactly original) was obviously not concerned with their reputation - they've resisted the temptation to cram the game with loads of flashy gimmicks that I'd have probably slagged off anyway, and gone for a simple-but-well-executed, concept. While there's no great depths to the game, everything that's there is polished and up to standard, with fairly reasonable sonic effects and appealing graphics.

The power-ups are all very easy to understand, there are no difficult techniques to get the hang of and your parrot is slightly intelligent, in that as the grid is laid out clearly in squares, he'll move from square to square as opposed to around the screen pixel by pixel.

So it's a game that you should buy (I love this reviewing lark), because it's good (can you believe I actually get paid for this stuff?). It's well presented, incredibly good fun and well worth whatever amount you'll end up paying for it (within reason - see the Not For Sale box-out to find out what I mean). Be sure to pick up this penguin.

What sort of magazine would give a game a big review and an excellent mark, then turn around and tell you it's currently unavailable? We would. The programmer of this wonderful little game, Jani Hirvo from Finland hasn't yet decided who's going to sell it, but if you promise to keep an eye on the news pages over the next few months, we'll promise to keep you informed.

There are plenty of goodies scattered about the levels to help you out on your impossible mission, turning your everyday, brightly-coloured, waddling, winged thing into Robopolly:

1. Bonus Level
   Getting to a bonus level is always a good idea, though it does mean you'll miss out on the rest of the level you're on, and the level afterwards. These special levels are usually incredibly easy, and give you the chance to collect loads of points before continuing with the rest of the game.
2. Extra Bombs
   Though your bombs are infinite, you can only drop one bomb at a time, having to wait for it to go off before dropping another one. If you've managed to get your hands on a bomb power-up, however, you'll be able to drop more than one bomb at a time.
3. Flamer
   When your bomb goes off, it normally fills the three squares in all four directions with flame, wiping out everything on those squares. Every time you pick up a flame power-up, the flames get longer, first filling four squares, then five, and so on. So if you collect enough, you can wipe a penguin out from clear across the screen.
4. Freeze
   This one's dead handy, as it freezes all the penguins, letting you stroll around and place bombs right next to crowds of the critters, killing off loads in one go. It's always best to grab a freeze power-up when you've got the ability to drop plenty of bombs at one time.
5. Shield
   As with every other game under the sun, the shield just makes you invulnerable for a while.
6. Speed
   Dead simple, this one, as it just speeds your parrot up.

Not all of the power-ups are good. If you pick up a mystery power-up, you could risk getting one of these little lot:

1. Constipation
   Sorry n'all, but I think you can probably figure out the relevance of the name for yourself; this power-up stops you dropping bombs for a short period of time.
2. Anti-Freeze
   We've already had one of these, but this one's a little different as the penguins keep moving, and you get frozen. Bummer, huh?
3. Slow Down
   You slow down, they don't (what the hell else could it have been?)
4. The 'Trots'
   I would have used the slightly more, erm, orthodox name for this affliction, but I haven't got a dictionary to hand. If you're unlucky enough to pick up this during the game, you'll be dropping bombs whether you like it or not. This may not sound too bad, but if you've got multiple bombs and long flames, you could have a hard time outrunning the shrapnel.

1. It's really incredibly good fun.
2. It carries on being incredibly good fun.
3. The levels are ingeniously-designed.
4. You don't have to worry about accuracy.

1. But the speedy penguins are irritating.