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Unless you're an absolutely first class programmer you have no chance of creating a fast, furious and addictive game. Now the Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit is set to change all that.

Playing Xenon II is one thing: writing it is quite another. What do you do, in other words, if you want to create your own masterpiece - but you haven't a clue what 68000 machine code is all about? SEUCK it, that's what.

At the beginning of the year Palace released the Amiga SEUCK, and ever since then we ST shoot-'em-up addicts have been marking off the days until our very own version arrived. Now the wait is over.

Unlike SEUCK, previous game creators relied on some sort of keyboard input and at least some knowledge of programming. STOS, for example, lets you design your own shoot-'em-up, but first your own shoot-'em-up, but first you must digest a lengthy manual and tackle the intricacies of a whole new language.

What makes the SEUCK environment so easy to use is that it's entirely menu-drivem so you can write your shoot-'em-up without ever having to touch your keyboard. SEUCK lets you load up one of the three shoot-'em-ups provided on disk and gradually edit it, until just about every parameter has been changed and you've created your own game.

Alternatively, you could start from scratch. Because of the way SEUCK is structured you could begin from any point in the game design, though running through the menu options in turn is the best approach. There are disadvantages, of course, the main one being that SEUCH only lets you create vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-ups. Sounds limiting? The three types of games on the program disk prove that it isn't. One selection box after another lets you change options so you can choose the type of scrolling, speed of gameplay, sound effects and the look of all sprites. The combinations give each game unique flavour and appeal.

Creating sprites has never been easier. Selecting the Edit Sprite menu option presents a dialog box with a blow-up work area of a 24 x 24 pixel sprite. Eight colours from the ST's palette of 512 are used to fill in the squares of the sprite, with one colour treated as an invisible element so the background shows through.

The finished sprite can be flipped across four planes - vital if you want an enemy to move in more than one direction. And by copying this sprite to separate locations, and making modifications which make up the different frames, you can achieve limited animation. This is essential to create explosion effects, brought together in the Object Edit option.

This in turn invokes another dialog box where several sprites can be grouped together to form animation. Up to eighteen frames can be grouped together with ten speeds of animation. There is an alternative direction option letting you define sprites to be used when an alien is moving in four directions. This feature allows you to create a walking enemy who always looks straight ahead.

SEUCK enables you to make each game unique by allowing you to change the way enemies react. You can decide the number of hits necessary to destroy the alien (a large number and you've got the impossible to beat end of level guardian); the direction in which they fire; the speed andnumber of bullets they shoot; and even sound effects accompanying explosions and bullets. All are defined from another menu option which makes up the last stage in deciding how each alien looks and responds.

Once the enemy has been created, the next step is to draw the backgrounds that accompany play. These are created in the same way as aliens, except that a 32x32 pixel block is provided for you to edit, several of which are pasted jigsaw-wise across each level. Again you have eight colours from a possible 512, but this time a different eight.

The idea here is to define a main background sprite to be repeated across the entire level. A handful of extra sprites may be positioned among these to add interesting landmarks such as walls or even enemy ammo dumps from which the aliens emerge.

Using the edit level optin you decide how each level moves and the speed of scrolling (0-4). Selecting 0 results in a stationary screen, so you can if you wish create a game like Loriciel's Albedo.

The major difference between the Amiga and ST versions of SEUCK is the latter's sound editor. A sophisticated sound creation routine lets you generate all sorts of special effects for rapid firing or enemy deaths.

Unfortunately, however, there's no way you can have sampled music playing during the game, which leaves you rather stuck with the ST sound chip. Sound is split into three sections - attack, sustain and decay. The attack rate goes up, sustain is the main sound and decay comes back down to silence. With these, pitch and frequency rates are edited.

The sound system uses all three channels in the sound chip and, although it's the most complicated area of SEUCK to use, it's worth mastering. Fifty different sound effects can be created within a game, and the more variety, the better.

Player limitations come next on the menu. Here you choose the number of lives that the player will have, and the number and direction of bullets fired. On top of this you can decide the playing area available in the game, outside which the player's craft cannot move. You could, for example, decide to use just a small square of the screen for playing. Alternatively, if you want to make it a push-scrolling game then the top of the playing area must be brought down so you're not pushing up from the screen top. (Imagine - you'd never see the aliens coming until they were on top of you!)

Attack waves, where you can use the joystick to draw the exact path an alien takes once it appears on screen, are the most exciting aspect of SEUCK. An option to join several sprites together, all running at the same speed, lets you link several enemy sprites and thus create one enormous guardian creature. Unfortunately, the sprites are killed separately.

By joining several sprites together, but making each run at different speeds, you can end up with the aliens looking as if they're virtually following their own path. This is important because each attack path you define takes up a lot of memory.

With all of these defined, it's time to test out your game, SEUCK provides two testing options: one lets you play the game as if you'd loaded it straight from disk, while the other gives you a cheat option providing infinite lives and the chance to go to any level you want.

Once you've made sure it's possible to get all the way through without meeting an invincible band of aliens, you can save the program onto a new disk as an auto-booting game. In theory you could market is as a budget game, but Palace intend it to be used more as a fun way of tailoring your own shoot-'em-ups.

Nobody is going to claim that SEUCH gives you the power to create another Xenon II, though it might be possible to write something that could be marketed as a budget game. What is does most definitely do, and do very well, is to let you create a fast and furious shoot-'em-up. Although you're restricted to vertically scrolling games, within these limitations it's possible to design and combine enough ideas to make sure you end up with an original concept.

Shoot-'em-ups are still addictive, and they still continue to dominate the games charts. SEUCK exploits that addictive quality and combines it with a superbly documented manual and a brilliantly simple menu system. In no time at all the only restriction on your games writing ability will be your own imagination.

Features 74%
Can create only vertically scrolling shoot-'em-ups, but wide range of options give great variety.

Speed 79%
Very fast indeed: playable games can be written without losing speed.

Ease Of Use 92%
Thorough, step-by-step manual and easy-to-grasp menu system. Sound editing can be complex.

Results 82%
You won't write Xenon II - but you could get on the ST Format disk.

Format Value 86%
Brilliant for the non-programmer, even if only one kind of game is possible.

Overall 83%
STOCK is a programming language, and is therefore more versatile; but SEUCK requires no programming knowledge whatsoever.