Ghouls, an example of how the standard of Amstrad software is rocketing now, is a very competent translation of Micro Power's BBC and Electron game. It's a platform affair with Pacman overtones, but the graphics are very well done.

ASK's latest educational program, Number Paint is designed to improve mental arithmetic. Players move Mr. Painter up and down ladders to collect numbers, trying to prevent him from falling down.

If you've ever fancied yourself as a landlord, Country Cottages should interest you. It's a property game - you buy and rent cottages, struggling against hazards such as burglars, fires and ghosts, the aim being to reach a specified target of capital.

Castle of Gems features Bertie Bear trying to collect gems, and stay one jump ahead of gem gobblers, gremlins and trees. The scenarios are Escher-type staircases, but the perspective can be more than a bit strange. Gems are scattered around, and as with Pacman, walking over them collects them, with an additional bonus if you get the last one on the screen. Some antagonists can be despatched quite easily, but others are immune to your efforts. Graphics are quite well done, but there's barely anything else to it.

LSL Logo is a 16K EPROM, hence the price, and is the result of two years' development by Catsoft, the company commissioned by the DTI for the feasibility of a BBC Logo. Written entirely in assembler, it takes Logo away from the primary school image it seems to have acquired, offering floating point arithmetic and list processing.

Good news for C64 owners is the recent deluge of Commodore 64 software. Even beter news is that the majority is pretty good.

Quicksilva's Summer Games, from Epyx, is probably the definitive Olympic games program, way ahead of even Daley's Decathlon, Micro Olympics and Decathlon. Doodle looks to be a very nice piece of graphics software.

So you thought straight 'Invaders' shoot-'em-ups were dead? Mr. Micro's Ad Infinitum shows there's life in the old dog yet.

What with all these literary and mythical games - Pegasis, Avalon, Gandalf, etc, it's not surprising that someone's gone back to the Greek classics and come up with an adventure based around Orpheus. In your travels through the 120 screens, you encounter fireballs, deadly birds, poisonous plants and the link, while new lives are gained by touching the 'Sterling' logo. Treasures are collected for points.

Catastrophes is a curious mix of game-styles. Your task is to manoeuvre your helicopter to collect bricks and build as tall a building as possible. Hazards include low-flying aircraft, storms, earthquakes and flood. In Star Egg, you must first overcome the Guardians, and enter the hatchery to kill off newly-hatched aliens. The hatchery is a network of levels, ladders and lifts.

Fancy a bit of martial arts? Well, Kung-Fu is just for you. The game features wire-grame pugilists, movement is smooth and there's an option to see a slow motion replay of winning strikes. Played against Oriental backdrops, you take on another player or your Spectrum. The theme's novel, nicely done and deserves to do well. Bug-Byte's other release, Turmoil is a platform game with neat graphics and a good theme. Your task is to fill a car with oil - you must collect an oil can, then stand under an oil tank from which oil drops descend. Then you take the filled can to the car. Life isn't made easy by the sword-wielding Arabs, nor by the screen layout, nor by having to stand on moving walkways. Fortunately, there's a training mode.

Setting a time limit to adventures is unusual, but that's the name of the game in Assignment East Berlin. It's a text only adventure, with a noun-verb only phrase analyser.

Eclipse contines to turn out astronomical programs. Latest is a computer version of a globe. Continents are drawn in outline, and point on the planet's surface can be at screen-centre and you can rotate the globe in one or 15 degree (hourly) intervals. Expensive at £7.45, but interesting.

Want to get to know yourself? Life-Line, it's claimed, presents a fascinating new way of analysing your character, distinguishing between the personality you project and your real self. Fun and instructive as they are there's an argument that computer questionnaires are worse than those in magazines, as people tend to believe what the computer tells them. Life-Line categorises you into a personality type, such as Leader, Coordinator or Researcher.