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Train spotters, eh... they're an unusual bunch, aren't they? I mean who in their right mind would sit around worrying about the numbers on the sides of trains? Well, if Cronosoft's latest offering is to be believed, in the not so distant future the numbers on the sides of trains will hold the key to a fortune - in fact, it could be yours. You see trains made from incredibly volatile materials are going to become Bingo callers, honest.

Our story sees the star of this next generation of 'reality' television, an artificially intelligent locomotive called Chug Horncastle whose job it is to shunt trucks around and ultimately drop them out of the screen to choose numbers for the viewing public.

Whichever number is on the side of a truck as it gets marshalled into oblivion is the one selected for the home audience to mark off their cards and Chug can also knock two trucks together in order to make one of them explode; when two trucks 'merge' in this way either their two values get added together or, if the total would have been over ninety, the lower value is subtracted from the higher one. Strangely, colliding two similarly numbered trucks gets a random outcome but that's unstable materials for you. Of course, this means that Chug can ultimately decide which numbers are going to be chosen, so there's nothing to stop him putting money on the table and then influencing the outcome a little. Well okay, it's probably highly illegal but since Chug is a living train the laws are probably a tad grey around that area.

So we have Chug, a cute little train who bears a resemblance to a tank engine and even has a whistle sound when he jumps (which is slightly odd behaviour for a train), some equally nice trucks with numbers clearly printed on their sides, some simple but effective backgrounds on each level - so far everything sounds good. But there is a problem.

The difficulty level in Loco Bingo starts off at 'hard' and goes upwards like the proverbial rat when confronted with a drainpipe. On the more complex levels, keeping the route to the exit open is sometimes difficult, especially by the third level where it's very easy to block off not only the exit but a route that the player needs to traverse in order to shunt trucks into that exit. If that happens, the trucks will eventually explode and clear the way but waiting for that detonation wastes precious time.

Frustration is the name of the game here, and that's a shame because the game itself is a great bit of creative design and up to Jonathan Cauldwell's usual standards of execution (although the limited spot sound and lack of in-game music is lamentable). It's just that it can be very hard to get anywhere and quite often a player's luck rather than their judgement will be responsible for completing a level. Despite this, Loco Bingo is recommended - but only to those who like their games closer to the challenging end of the scale. Get chugging away then - the future of Bingo is here!

Price: £2.99 plus postage
Publisher: Cronosoft
Website: www.cronosoft.co.uk
Platform: 48k Sinclair ZX Spectrum