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Grafic Visions is a run-from-home business that aims to give its customers value for money and excellent games. Unfortunately, they're going the wrong way about it if Snott is anything to go by!

The plot wibbles on about aliens and orbs and things, but what it boils down to is a platform game. You play Snott, a green thing, that has to trundle along and eat these orbs. You can only do that, though, when you've shot them and they start bouncing up and down. You can't actually jump, but you sort of take off and fly about, and pressing Fire sends you back down to earth (slowly). You can only leave screens by walking off them, not flying. Each level has a time limit and this is reduced rapidly when a nasty hits you or you're shot by a gun.

The usual thing to do with home-grown software is to make excuses such as "Oh, they haven't much money, but they're trying". But if they want people to buy their game, they have to make it playable and interesting, whatever the price, because let's face it, when you spend the money you're not interested in how small the company is, you just want a good quality game. Which Snott definitely isn't. It's STOS-written and quite frankly there have been better type-in listings for the Spectrum.

If Grafic Visions really want to outdo the major companies, their best best is to spend much more time developing a really good game. And if it means bumping the price up a bit, do it. One thing's for certain - they're not going to please anyone with this.