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Everyone knows you should never wake someone who's in a sleep-induced trance, but what should you do if they're in mortal danger? That's the startlingly simple premise of Sleepwalker, the latest platform game from Ocean.

Sleepwalker revolves around the story of little Lee, the blonde-haired somnambulist of the title. Usually when he sleepwalks, Lee confines himself to his room, but one night his mother accidentally leaves his window open and Lee leaps out onto the dangerous streets of Kipsville. Luckily for Lee, you play his faithful canine sidekick, Ralph, and it's your job to get the dozy kid back to bed without waking him up. However, things aren't as simple as they seem...

As Lee trundles around Kipsville, arms outstretched like a night-shirted zombie, he encounters all kinds of hazards - from abrasive nightclub bouncers to water-filled sewers, speeding cars to perilous rooftops. Each time Lee comes into contact with a hazard he wakes up a little and, if he sustains too much damage, he eventually loses a life. It's your job to prevent Lee from running into these obstacles either by clearing the way for him or by throwing yourself at the hazard and taking the flak instead. Ralph's a bit of a supercanine in the dog world and there's nothing you can do to him which is going to cause him any permanent damage - you can frazzle him on fires, get him into fights with various meanies, even get squashed flat by falling boulders - as long as Lee's safe and still asleep, that's all you need to worry about. To help you, Ralph's also been given extraordinary powers - he's brilliant at running, jumping, bridging gaps and he can even kick Lee out of danger. Ralph truly is a wonderdog.

The action takes place over six themed levels - Kipsville, the Zoo, the Graveyard, the Construction Yard, the Factory and Kipsville Returns. Each level has its own peculiar hazards associated with it - the Zoo is filled with water-squirting elephants and vicious snakes, for example, while the Factory is jam-packed with pretty mean, all-consuming furnaces.

You guide Lee around each level by pushing or kicking him from platform to platform, while keeping him out of danger. Usually, there are safe places you can leave Lee while you check out the hazards further ahead. However, the only certainty you have is that, if trouble is brewing, Lee can usually find it before you do.

Fortunately, pressing M offers you an on-screen map facility. There are power-ups dotted around each level - see the Custard Pies and Whoopie Cushions box - which make life easier. You can also pick up five letters on each level which spell COMIC; this is useful for gaining access to the bonus levels where plenty more surprises lie in store.

If you manage to get to one of the bonus levels, Ralph is left to his own devices to collect heaps of power-ups and a whole bundle of odd puzzle icons. Every time you collect twenty red balloons, for instance, Lee is awarded with an extra attempt at getting home, while collecting the puzzle icons in a certain sequence entitles you to see up to eight different animated sequences.

You see, the puzzle icons can be strung together to form one of Ralph's wicked dreams about his sleepwalking master. Collect a banana, a plus symbol, the Red-skins icon, a minus symbol and the letters R, E and D and you see Ralph place a banana skin in Lee's path for him to slip up on. There are over 75 different puzzle icons for you to piece together and it has your brain doing somersaults trying to work out what they all do.

Ralph and Lee's adventures in Kipsville form the basis for one of the best platform games ever to be seen on your ST. Gameplay is stunning with fast parallax-scrolling and well-animated sprites which are easily manoeuvrable thanks to the friendly joystick controls. Sleepwalker's filled with comic touches - like Ralph's Wylie Coyote impersonation when he suddenly stops in mid-air - and is more like a Warner Bros cartoon than a hackneyed old platform game.

There are some excellent samples, including the voices of Lenny Henry and Harry Enfield and there are even some catchy tunes, almost unheard of in an ST game.

Sleepwalker successfully strikes a balance between the strategy, arcade action and puzzle elements making it a seamlessly enjoyable experience. Even at the easiest difficulty level, the game's fiendishly hard to beat and it takes ages to complete each level.

Sleepwalker is one of the best ever platform games released for your ST. It's fast, funny, furious, original and incredibly frustrating with stunning graphics and gameplay.

Ocean have finally managed to come up with a game worthy of the hype and for once you don't have to sit in a bath of cold baked beans to do something worthwhile for charity. If you haven't bought Sleepwalker yet, go and do it now.

1. Sleepwalker is wild, wicked, infuriating fun and it's for charidee.
2. The graphics are more like a cartoon than a platform game, the samples are excellent and the tunes are catchy. Incredible!

1. There are quite a lot of disk swaps.
2. Its association with Comic Relief has prematurely dated it.