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"Icon-driven animated simulation game". Uh huh. Sound familiar? It sounds as though the programmers (or at least the marketing people) have just discovered icons and the animation possibilities of the C64. Anyway, to business:

"The Evil Crown," it says here. "Feudal England, 1200 AD." The game is a simulation of what it was like to be a Baron back in the good old bad old days. Starve the peasants, win a few tournaments, overthrow the King. The screen shows a small map of your barony with villages displayed quite neatly (little house-shaped icons - we'll come back to them in a minute). Most of the screen however is taken up by boxes, each representing some part of the economy of running a barony; taxes, tolls, protection money to the King and other necessary expenses.

The player starts off with 250 peasants and 500 pieces of gold. The object of the game is, by careful expenditure of that money and placement of the peasants to increase your holdings to the point where you are strong enough to challenge the King. A joystick moves an arrow onto one of the expenditure boxes, a sliding scale allows you to adjust how much you spend. Once all of that is out of the way, you can move on to the main part of the game...

Except that this is the main part of the game. What comes next is an "animated tournament", where you try to knock off as many opponents as you can (usually one or less), and the Battle stage, where other Barons try to invade your territory or your peasants revolt against you and you have to defend your territory. This too is "animated": pictorial representations of the two opposing sides meet in the centre of the screen, struggle a little, and then one retreats. Exciting stuff! he said, turning down the sound on the monitor. The only way the player can influence the course of the battle is by deciding how much to pay his militia or how many mercenaries he can afford to hire.

Assuming these stages are passed successfully, the Baron passed successfully, the Baron then reaps his Harvest - an increase or decrease in peasants and money. Peasants die due to starvation, attack by wild animals and war. Barring this, they increase by, well... Now if they could animate that...

Eventually, if the Baron is successful, he will be allowed to challenge the King. Failure means death of course. After then... Play again?

In terms of graphics, the display is clear, informative and uncluttered. But some of the icons and their use is slightly over the top. For instance, those little houses we mentioned earlier. They represent villages and you gain or lose a certain number at the start of each turn. But since the gains or losses can reach 50 or more, you would think there was an easier way of placing them on the map than picking up each one with the arrow, placing it on the map, going back for the next one, picking it up with - well, you get the idea.

We never knew that a single bear could account for upwards of a third of the population of a village in a single year, but you've got to learn something from a game.