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Whirligig is the story of a ship with brains and a pilot with none. Point number 1: there are well over 4,000,000,000 so-called eigenspaces you only need to visit five. In these five locations exist the perfect solids (a cube, a tetrahedron, a dodecahedron, an octahedron and an icosahedron) you need to complete this game.

The first game screen is a map which displays the various stargates, their routes and any other satellites in the eigenspace. There ensues a two-minute wait while, presumably, the computer sets the area up. Then the game starts in earnest and the whole universe springs from the centre of the screen. At this point on, the early eigenspaces it's a quick dash to the nearest stargate and the next eigenspace. But as you get to the higher spaces fuel starts to run out, and enemy craft attack and deplete your weapon supplies. Luckily base ships are to be found floating peaceably around certain areas of space. There are only three different base ships for the two types of weapons and fuel and they can only be found in certain eigenspaces so it can involve a lot of side-tracking before you can top your supplies up.

The solids are contained in spaces 6, 28, 496, 8128 and 33550336. Thankfully Firebird supply two possible routes to the last solid otherwise you could be left hanging around for a heck of a long time. Finding the first solid is no problem, the second is none too hard either but then the enemy ships start to become more devious and fly up from the bottom of the screen which means they spend half their time cleverly hidden by the ship's control panel should you have it raised. Sneaky.

To deal with the enemy, you have four chaff pods and a number of heat-seeking missiles.

The enemy 'spacers' are done out in very nice solid 3D like your craft only they tend to be a lot nippier and consequently ram your ship leaving a mass of engines, capsules and toilet rolls. One of the most impressive technical effects comes at the start and end of an area where the universe implodes or explodes depending on whether you're going in or out of space.

The control method really got me though. A continuous spin is induced by moving he mouse either left or right. Thrust is gained by moving the mouse forward and missiles are launched with a deft stroke of the mouse button. Grasping the little rodent in my left hand I promptly executed a series of dazzling twists and turns that would make a no-legged elephant look overly graceful. After several hours of play my prowess with the control method enabled me to find the first stargate which I immediately rammed. Although it's fiddly the control method is well suited to the game, if it was any easier than alien bashing would just be an unnecessary waste of time. With the mouse it proves to be more of a challenge.

Whirligig could be substituted Looking For A Needle In A Haystack Simulator, if there was more to do then I could have given a higher mark but with a total lack of real fun objectives Whirligig stumbles, falls and lands smack on its nose.