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Following fast on the heels of Outlaw's first release - Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit (that's SEUCK to you) comes Troll, what you might call the company's first attempt at a 'real' game.

Humgruffin, we are told, is a large and amiable troll who has stumbled into the netherworld of Narc, an eldritch land of crystal caverns populated by not-so-amiable goblins. Judging from the poster that comes with the game Humgruffin is not what you'd call a picture of beauty, but what he lacks in good looks he makes up for in intelligence. Being a smart cookie, he realises his only chance of escape is to reverse the spell that got him into this mess. And to do that he must collect the key crystal from each chamber and place it in its amulet.

The chambers are made up of hexagonal, square, round, and variously-shaped sections placed together to form a honeycomb. This is the game's biggest drawback. It might be OK if you have a monitor, or the latest FST wonderscreen TV, but on mine I could hardly make out enough detail to discover where I was, never mind where I was going. This can be pretty infuriating when you're trying to hop up and down the hexagons because often you can't get where you want to go and it's not obvious why. I found the best solution to this problem was to sit five inches from the screen.

Troll isn't one of those games where you can walk out of one screen and into another, which is why it's full of holes. Humgruffin has holes in his pockets - lots of them. By throwing one of these onto the ground in front of him, he can jump down it and escape into another cave. Holes have a multitude of uses. Humgruffin can throw one into the path of an encroaching goblin and wave bye bye as it disappears into oblivion. But Humgruffin is not the only one with a hole or two to throw around. Perilous death holes appear from nowhere and swallow up troll and goblin alike.

Apart from coming into contact with a goblin, which no one in their right mind would risk, there is only one other danger Humgruffin has to watch out for. When they're not chasing after you, or falling down the holes, the goblins spend their leisure time building walls. By placing tile upon tile, they can make parts of the cave inaccessible, or even wall you in completely. If this happens, the only way out is via a hole, assuming you've got somewhere to throw it, that is. Hole jumping seems to be a bit of a haphazard undertaking. Sometimes you end up in a different cave altogether, occasionally you end up somewhere else in the cave, so looking before you leap is out of the question.

There are other ways to get around though. Every now and then a mushroom sprouts out of the floor; if you can get there before it disappears you can bounce up and down on it. This spins the wheel of fortune and sends you (via another hole of course) into yet another cave. Here you will find the same thing as the last one, and your task is again to get the crystal and stick it in the amulet. As well as mushrooms, the odd bit of fruit appears every now and then and is well worth munching as it keeps your energy up.

If you get bored walking around on the cave floor you can head for the 'flip pyramid' which somersaults you onto the ceiling. Getting about on the ceiling is tricky to say the least. The temptation is to stand on your head, though turning the TV upside down might be a more comfortable option.

I have to say I'm disappointed. After SEUCK I'm sure I wasn't the only one anticipating great things from Outlaw. Troll is OK, but that's about as far as it goes. Everything about it is average - graphics, sound, gameplay - the lot. Maybe summer's here already.