Commodore 64 and Puzzle fans will be happy to hear that Marble Logic 2006, by Petr Chlud, has recently been released into the public domain. The game plays in not to a dissimilar fashion to the popular game Zoo Keeper, in that there is a matrix of marbles that must be sorted into groups of three or more by temporarily swapping the position of one marble with an adjacent one horizontally or vertically to it. The production has all of the polish you would expect from the homebrew programmers of today, with a solid tried-and-tested game mechanic to back it up. Best of all, it can be downloaded for free to play on your favourite emulator, or should you wish, a real C64 with the right transfer tools.

It's worth pointing out that there's already a Zoo Keeper clone in development called Zoo Mania for the same platform. I wonder therefore which will be considered the better of the two? You'll soon find out my verdict at least, as I'll be putting on test in the coming weeks. You'll be able to read the verdict here. Until then, you can download the game from noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=36524

Finally, the C64 software giant Protovision is preparing to unveil its latest release, The Adventures Of Jim Slim In Dragonland. This production is a rather slickly presented and playable platform-cum-puzzle game, and is in its final testing stages as we go to press. The task in hand is to guide Jim Slim through the Darklands to recover a magical skull that has protected Jim and his people for many generations. Also, Jim must avenge the kidnapping of his beautiful bride-to-be, Candy, by facing the evil lord Gothar and his many minions. It is expected to hit Protovision's online store in the autumn. If boxed, it will retail at €20, if unboxed it'll be a snip at €13, and will be a disk-only affair, niftily utilising Commodore's RAM Expansion Units (if you have one attached to your machine). Keep an eye on www.protovision-online.de for more info about this release, and be sure to check out its current portfolio of quality games available to buy.

Back in the days when people were ecstatic with the Sinclair ZX81, there were many 1k compilations released with five or more programs on one tape. Although mostly crude and largely unplayable, somehow they represented something good and wholesome about computing, inspiring others to build their own creations with Sinclair's rather obscure 'one touch' BASIC, or to dabble in machine language, thus helping to build Britain's illustrious software industry. Good times.

Ever paying homage to these days is Andre Baune, bedroom programmer extraordinaire, who has just added another game to his own 1k collection, and this time it's called Goali.

The object of the game is, as you would expect, quite simple: move the keeper left or right to save the ball from hitting the back of the net using the keys I and P.

You can download this and other new ZX81 games from Andre's website, at www.zx-team.de/andre.