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As my granny always used to say, you can never have too many puzzle games. She said that about a lot of things, but this time it's worth heeding her advice - Riddles And Stones is the 'lifework' of Renne Lerch the third, a man who quite obviously knows how to create really involving brain-teasers,

Riddles is based on a grid of squares, each taken up by either a piece of wall, a floor tile embossed with a symbol, or a special block which generates other sliding blocks bearing logos matching the floor tiles. It's your job, using a frame controlled by a joystick, to create and slide the correct tiles in the right order to provide a path through the level starting at one set of arrows and finishing at the other. This isn't all that easy, as once you've created a block you can only leave it on a square bearing the same symbol. You're also operating on ice - if you push a block, it'll keep sliding until it hits something. It's on this simple concept that the rest of the game is based.

One of the first things you'll notice about Riddles is that it's almost exactly the same as nearly every other slidey puzzle game, save a few major differences - it's not a tedious stroll through boring levels of irritating, repetitive puzzles. It's not based on your ability to find a pattern by trial and error and then stick to it. It doesn't call on any major hand-eye co-ordination (the puzzles are brain-taxing rather than reflex-testing), and you can undo mistakes by sliding blocks back the way they came.

If, after that kind of introduction, you're expecting to have to use your brain when playing Riddles, you're absolutely right. This is a puzzle game testing your ability to solve abstract problems and think several steps ahead of yourself, and it works very well. The first few levels don't give you much of an idea as to exactly what's to come as they start with the basics, giving you the chance to get used to the way the game works, and how you should go about slotting blocks into line in the right order. As you progress through the levels, though, your problems increase, until you're sliding blocks onto their correct courses - there's a definite difficulty curve to Riddles, and it's quite steep.

And that's pretty much all there is to Riddles - like Walkerz, it's a simple concept that's been neatly executed. Exactly how neatly is a matter for debate, though - the backdrops, intro and exit screens, as well as the titles, fonts and borders are all very pretty, but the game grid leaves a little to be desired. There's not really enough of a sense of 3D to show up the white blocks you've already created against the white tiles they move across, without even taking into account the white walls you have to steer your blocks around.

Sonically, Riddles is complete - each level comes accompanied by music robust enough to withstand the barrage of different sound effects that you trigger when you either get something right or do something horribly wrong. Whether all that noise is necessary on a game like this is debatable, but everyone's got a volume knob.

Riddles And Stones is a puzzle game worth taking a look at. It may not be the most original concept, as it definitely has roots in a lot of other tiles (Pipemania and Puzznic to name a few), but it's well-executed and the levels provided are cunningly designed. If you do ever get bored of the levels you've been provided with, a built-in editor gives you the chance to build your own puzzles to tie your friends in knots with!

In short, this is a game that all hardened puzzlers should consider buying. It's deeper than most recent puzzlers, with a basic design simple enough to let you get on with the intense thought that Riddles demands.

Until the game gets a UK distributor, the only question you should be asking yourself is "How much is 35DM in real money?" Buy it right now.

If you want a copy of Riddles And Stones, you're going to have to do some big posting, and send 45DM to:

Lerch - RAS, Dritte Wendung 9, 023970 Wismar, Germany.