An arcade-adventure called Rola Ball, you might think could have been called Airball 2. That is a fair description of this program.

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The game is set on a distant planet inhabited by tribes of vicious cubes and peaceful rola-balls who are in grave danger of becoming as numerous as the dodo. You have the three remaining little globes with which to save the species and to do this you guide them along numerous pathways picking up pieces of jigsaw (I've come to the conclusion that balls must have hands after all!) which interlink to form a logo at the top of the screen. Get all the pieces and you live happily ever after, get jumped on three times by the cubes and you're as dead as a moa (I've used dodo already and I don't want to be repetitive!).

This all sounds pretty much like Airball so far, but there are differences. Gone are the nails and spikes, skelton tiles, walls and thankfully you don't deflate either. That's what there isn't. What there is is speed; these cubes don't hang about, and the pathways consist of more twists and turns and convolutions needing you to manoeuvre onto an exit disc to progress onto the next screen.

Control is totally by the keyboard - no joystick option - and is quite difficult to get familiar with in such a reflex-oriented program. Up to the left is Q, down to the right is A, up to the right is P and down to the left is L. These directions are necessary because of the 3D style perspective that the game is played in. Additional keys used are the space bar to pick up pieces of the jigsaw, ENTER to pause, CLEAR to exit the screen when on a disc and finally BREAK which forfeits a life when you appear to be stuck.

However, if you do resort to the BREAK key, or indeed whenever you lose a life, you are not just put back on the previous screen but are jettisoned back to the starting screen which means you have to sprint through several screens you've previously laid barren to get back to where you originally were. The ironic thing about this procedure is that you often lose another life while retracing your footsteps.

The graphics are hi-res black and white without any minute detail - balls, cubes and crosses don't exactly need precision artistry, but manage to look impressive by the complexity and depth the pathways suggest. There's also a nice little tune to introduce the game but one thing that has been missed is a score feature, the only guide being the building up of the jigsaw, and this disappears at the end.

The more I play this the more I like it; at first it's a little too quick when using the unfamiliar keys. Once this is overcome through the challenge of exploring more and more alleyways requiring greater ingenuity and speed drives you on. There are forty-nine pieces of jigsaw to collect, with only three lives, so the odds are a bit stacked against you, although you can exit screens without getting all the pieces, so you can play your tactics and draw your maps in advance of completion.

This game has obviously been influenced by Airball and is still very well written, but the moral is that when you look like your father it's hard to follow in his footsteps with your own talents. I'm looking forward to the grandson though!