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Wouldn't it be nice to have a game that combined the graphics of Populous with the playability of Sim City? A game where you had total control over the development of a city - one which actually looked like a city? Well, step right this way, because Gremlin may just have something to interest you.

In Utopia, you are given command of a newly-formed colony on a deserted planet. Using the available resources, it's up to you to expand and improve the colony, making it the best you can for your people. Their contentment is measured by a Quality of Life (QOL) rating.

Starting with a few essential buildings - such as a life support, some hydroponic sites and a command centre - and a handful of people, you have to construct further buildings in accordance with your colonists' needs and wishes. Your people are constantly multiplying, so your food supply is soon inadequate, which follows you to build more hydroponic sites. You must also ensure they have enough oxygen and power by adding further life support and power generators. You need stores to keep surplus supplies in, and flux, pods to store unusued energy.

Once the basics are catered for - at least temporarily - you can invest in other things. Some laboratories would be useful. With these, a few scientists working in them and a healthy research grant, you soon produce new inventions that make life that bit easier - more powerful solar panels, for instance. Then, how about a sports centre to keep your people amused?

Unfortunately you're no alone on the planet. Another race have settled elsewhere, and are evolving identically. Soon or later they attack you - and when they do, you must be prepared.

There's a wide range of weapons you can use - defensive ones, such as laser turrets and missiles, and offensve ones - spaceships and tanks. The latter items have to be built in workshops, which, in turn, have to be built. You also need to construct a mine over a suitable ore deposit to produce the raw material, a chemical plant over a similar deposit of fuel tanks to hold it, and a weapons lab to arm the ships and tanks. As you can see, building weapons is not something to be taken lightly.

Although you can never see the alien city, you can send spies into it to find out about the race and tell you when an attack is likely. Again, the information you get back is dependent on the funding you put in. You can also make a pre-emptive attack on their city if you're particularly aggressive.

Building, researching, spying and so on all take money. For the first six months you're given a grant to help you, which you can supplement by trading some of your less essential items. Trade can either be done automatically by the trading computer within limits you set, or manually each month. Each colonist pays tax, too.

As if all this wasn't enough, there are occasional natural events that interfere with the running of the colony. Solar eclipses render your solar panels inoperable, meteors destroy buildings and machinery sometimes goes wrong and damages nearby buildings.

There are ten scenarios included with Utopia which effectively act as difficulty levels. Each scenario presents you with a different terrain, alien race and problems from those of the last one. A scenario never actually ends unless your city is completely destroyed by the aliens, but you can consider it completed when the vital Quality of Life rating rises over 80%.

The graphics in Utopia are a strange mixture of the impressive and the thoughtlessly plain. The main display graphics are very well drawn, full of detail and imaginatively designed - although you need a monitor to get the most from them - but the icons, some of the informative graphics and the text look shoddy and amateurish. There's not much animation - it's confined to the spaceships and tanks, plus a few flashing lights on the buildings. Sound can be toggled between reassuring but unambitious beeps and a selection of maddening but indifferent tunes.

At first glance, Utopia appears to be loaded with rules and complications. Dig deeper and you discover there's more to it than just changing lots of numbers. As your colony grows, you gain more money and more things begin to happen. You then become completely involved in its running. There are so many things to take care of at once, you just don't have a chance to sit idle and watch.

The game does have a few faults. It's hard - the first few times the aliens attack, your city is completely destroyed. Even when you can fight back, it is a real struggle to raise the QOL to above 60%, let alone 80%. There's no way to access other parts of the planet quickly (apart from the scroll arrows) - to do this you have to bring up the map screen, click on the area you want, and return to the display. And there's quite a bit of disk swapping if you've only got one drive.

But these faults are not enough to detract from what really is a first-rate god-game. There's enough here to keep you occupied for several months at least, and there's even the possibility of more scenario disks to come. For all these reasons, Utopia is the first Gremlin game to gain a Format Gold. Long may its hydroponics domes flourish.

1. Undeniably similar to Sim City, but this is set in the future and is more interesting.
2. Populous springs to mind on seeing the graphics, but the games aren't really similar.
3. Closest in spirit and gameplay to Railroad Tycoon. Utopia has superior graphics and is more accessible.
4. Setting is reminiscent of Millennium 2.2, Deuteros, Supremacy et al.