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Bob Pearmain’s first professional release for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is really quite simple in many ways. The prologue tells a story of BipBoi and his friends living in a peaceful and colourful world of Bip, which is full of an endless supply of positive energy masses, usually in a star-shaped form. All of a sudden, the tranquility was abruptly halted due to the forces of Zorgonia breaking through the gateway of Blor. These evil invaders have stolen Bip’s abundant power sources for their own purposes, and it’s up to BipBoi and his friends, Maddo and Beanie, to face their nemeses and bring back the vitality to their beloved home world.

And so begins a single-screen collect-'em-up, in which you guide one of the trio per level to collect a set amount of the floating energy masses while avoiding the malevolent Zorgonians that patrol each screen. While BipBoi has the ability to shoot the enemies, Maddo is able to 'wrap' around the screen (that is to leave it on one side and reappear on the other), and Beanie looks cute.

Visually, everything is quite naive and child-like - as I have pointed out before on reporting on this project earlier in the year, the game could have come from Dick Bruna’s imagination, who is famous for the Miffy children’s books.

The attack patterns vary from one level to the next, although you will usually see some repeated later, and the collectible energy masses can come in many forms, but are usually yellow stars and typically move in a circular motion. Once collected, another will appear to take its place, and, unless BipBoi has shot the evil roamers, the Zorgonians will change direction once touched, and can hone in on the player on contact. This will take away some of the power meter at the bottom of the screen. Some of this can be replenished with BipBoi by obliterating the nasties, and for the other characters there's no way to refuel.

For each new stage, you will have a slightly varying amount of energy to collect, and the player's power meter will slowly dissipate, acting as a generous timer. There are only three lives, which can not be replenished.

The accompanying beeper-driven music is very deliberate, and made to distract the player's concentration to make mistakes. I don't find this so annoying, and it can be disabled anyway (I personally wouldn’t allowed it to be switched off on that basis). The most likely feature that will cause an unforced error is the changing colour schemes throughout, sometimes mixing the worst combinations from the Spectrum’s quirky palette, but again I feel that this is an obtuse part of the design. There is one particularly nasty level which, under certain circumstances, can not be completed. I initially thought that this was a bug, but when I flagged it with Rob, he said that it is also an evil part of the game, so be cautious and concentrate on collecting the energy masses rather than being too clever. This is in spite of the fact that the only real point of the game is to beat your best score. It does test your reactions, and is very much in the vein of early Speccy games. It's not trying to be anything big or clever; the simple game mechanic is actually quite refreshing to see, even on such unsophisticated 8-bit technology.

Cute, colourful and frustrating! One of those titles that is easy to pick up and difficult to put back down.