There has been a nuclear mishap, there are now thousands of people trapped in an underground hibernation dome. You are in control of three droids whose task it is to transport these lost souls to safety. Each droid has its own special ability. You use them one at a time, toggling control between the three by simply pressing the fire button.
Droid One is the tunneller who digs through earth, whilst Droid Two teleports the survivors to safety. Droid Three pushes boulders, but only one at a time. Now for the nasties, there are a few 'guardian' droids knocking around who will take a life if they bump into you. Apart from them, there's only the boulders to contend with.
The tunneller Droid is particularly susceptible to boulders. If it tunnels away at a chunk of earth beneath a boulder, the offending item is likely to fall on its head. This, to me, was more fun than transporting boring old survivors. With great skill, you can get your tunneler droid completely surrounded by boulders, leaving it totally useless.
The game has seven levels, each one having both a time limit and a specific amount of survivors to rescue. So in level one, you get 3,000 seconds (just under an hour, yawn) to rescue 135 people. Level two? Well, I couldn't manage to stay awake for it.
There are elements of strategy in Survivors. It's best to try to keep the three droids together as opposed to just going careering off with one, since the skills of the other two will come in useful at various stages.
So it doesn't sound too bad so far? But I haven't mentioned the graphics yet. There are of the 'block' variety - you know, the stuff that looks as though it was programmed in Basic. Scrolling is equally bad. It's not really a scroll but a judder.
Admittedly the three droids are graphically more acceptable. At least they have moving parts. The earth mover has claws that open and shut and the boulder pusher stamps its feet, waves its arms and nods its head - wacky mover.
And lastly sound. There isn't any except for a different pitch of beep when you transfer control between droids and a constant ticking sound as the seconds pass.
I can't say I enjoyed Survivors. There's really nothing to commend it, owing to its severe lack of anything approaching originality.