Set in a ghostly castle, ThunderMonk is another game which Minerva designed for the children of those business people who buy its business software.

You take the part of an apparitional monk floating around (and sometimes through) the castle collecting goblets. Three goblets must be obtained for the thundermonk to complete a level but liberally sprinkled around are plenty of other objects such as doughnuts, crowns and gold sovereigns. All these are considered useful for our monk but not everything smells of roses.

Cacti reduce energy levels and so do spiked wagon wheels and rotating pink bolases. Some can be destroyed by hurling a ball of fire or a dagger at them and this also applies to certain blocks which vanish most realistically when hit.

Energy 'pills' reset the monk's power so it is advisable to use them only when the sampled voice says 'Energy low', although bunches of grapes and batteries perform much the same task.

This isn't very logical so far, but who cares? Without doubt, ThunderMonk has a 'Minerva-ish' feel to it and the game resembles Hoverbod in a variety of ways.

The sprites are large and nicely animated in the usual Minerva fashion and the scrolling is very acceptable. The four levels are of increasing order of difficulty and the fourth is colossal. At least, the authors tell me it's colossal, I've never actually got there. Frankly, unless your brain is up to Mensa standard I wouldn't bother trying!

Seriously though, the so and so's at Minerva have probably used a fair quantity of Arc memory for the maps and it takes a good hour to get the feel of some of them. The puzzles are well thought out and often become highly frustrating, especially when dextrous keyboard manipulation is required.

Sound has been well done but sadly the sampled noises and voices are not being used in a spot the sound competition (See March Games Page) - this is being saved for Ibix The Viking, due soon. Humour now comes as relatively standard in Minerva games and ThunderMonk doesn't miss out.

For some completely obscure reason there is a lamb bleating loudly near the start of the second level, and I could think of nothing less subtle to silence it than to throw a dagger at the poor thing (Don't tell the RSPCA!), to which it responded by promptly vanishing!

Although this game could quite easily have been done on the BBC, graphics, size and possible sound aside, I think I can recommend it, particularly as I now know exactly who it's aimed at. It isn't as good as Orion, but safely comes second best in my book.