Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of software sent into Amstrad User for review. The first is the usual, commercial software. The Jet Set Willy-type program, written by an established software house with a good professional feel. The second type is home-brew software, often written in Basic. These programs lack the finish of the professional product.

Spook Loot falls somewhere between these two. It is certainly not the product of a major software house, however it is too good to be relegated to ranks of the dabbler in the software industry.

The program comes from the Essex based Andtronic. With this address it would be nice to think that the game is the result of some moon-lighting by an Amsoft programmer, however it is not good enough for that to be likely.

Spook Loot takes ages to load. This is because each block is saved as a separate program. The programmer has done this to allow himself the time between blocks to print a "please wait" message. The program is big.

There are 160 rooms and a variety of nasty sprites. These materialize as you enter each room, although on reading the inlay card you discover that they are supposed to be climbing through trap doors. The poem and description on the inlay card mimics the style of Ultimate. The programming falls far short. Once loaded you discover that the program is of the usual 'run round the maze and zap the nasties' type of program Some of the aliens are pretty and the use of colour is quite good but the game somehow lacks something. It could certainly do with some music and the movement is jerky, the lack of diagonals on the joystick control is quite frustrating. Perhaps I am being too hard - alter all, it is a commendable effort - but I wouldn't buy it.