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YOU'VE got to admit it - Sandy White has class. He's the programmer who wrote the magnificent classic Ant Attack for Quicksilva, and he's back again with his old boss Rod Cousens. I Of the Mask is the result, and Sandy is obviously pursuing his own style as independently as ever.


The game is a maze quest in which you have to collect the parts of a robot - 17 in all - in order to win the Space Trials of Newgama III. The parts have to be collected in the right order, and are contained within 32 universes located throughout the maze. Each universe has three crystals, one containing the part, one taking you to another universe, and the third dumping you in another part of the maze. Your score is increased each time you collect a part, and decreases with time. If you get the wrong part, you lose a life.

Your tiny spaceman is dwarfed by the towering walls and, when you turn, instead of the usual switch between two frames, the whole scene turns with you, lurching wildly until it reaches what passes for balance again. It's the stuff of nightmares.

The robot parts are extremely difficult to recognise at first, and you must use a combination of sensible guessing and simple trial and error to work out which you should go for first. That makes the first few games fairly arbitrary, but as you recognise the first few collectable parts, the rest becomes easier through elimination. In general, the crystals form an efficient means of travelling swiftly through the maze, but do not put you where you expect. It can be very hard indeed to reach the appropriate universe - and if you have run out of ammunition you will not be able to shoot down the part.

Although there's obviously much strategy and skill involved in the game, it does become a little repetitive. Luckily, the power of the graphics save it from becoming totally boring, but we should have preferred to see rather more variety all the same.


Publisher Electric Dreams Price £7.95
Memory 48K Joystick Sinclair, Kempston, Cursor
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Chris Bourne

Sandy White, author of 3D Ant Attack and the follow-up Zombie Zombie has now produced his third game for Rod Cousens, who is publishing it under the new Electric Dreams label.

The game revolves around the tortuous Newgama III space trials. Equipped with an A4A Pack Jet Suit, you are cast into a massive maze containing 32 universes. To escape you need to construct a robot from active robot spares lying around within the universes which may be accessed from nodes in the maze.

There are enough parts within the maze to create at least one robot, but before a robot part can be added to your collection it must be deactivated. The parts also have to be located and deactivated in a specific order, starting from the feet upwards. Upon collecting the final component, the mask, the greatest award is bestowed: you become Of The Mask.

The top half of the screen is taken up with the view of the maze and includes a little effigy of your good self on the lower part. The bottom of the screen contains various status indicators and keeps track of the robot you are assembling, with parts being added as you collect them.

The corridors of the maze are displayed in one colour, each wall being shaded with a different pattern depending on the angle of the wall to your view. As you move through the maze, the perspective changes, together with the shading. When you turn a corner, instead of just flipping ninety degrees into the next corridor, the corner and walls move around smoothly.

The maze is split into different sections or zones, each having a colour allocated to it. In the corridors the colour of the walls matches the colour of the zone you're in, and flashing areas shown on the map also have flashing walls when you move through them. On the bottom right hand comer of the screen is a small window showing your position upon the overall map, with your direction and position marked by a small arrow. As you move about the arrow stays central and the window scrolls over the larger maze map. Pausing the game is quite helpful. since the full map of the maze is displayed.

Along the various corridors are handily positioned node points: these are gateways to the robot parts and other sections of maze. Upon entering a node section the view flips to three giant crystals which rotate about the screen and you are given ammunition for your laser - the number of shots you have remaining is shown on a little counter in the status area.

When you fire on a crystal, it beams you to another place. The top crystal transports you to a different node with a different set of three crystals, while the bottom right crystal takes you to a section of the maze. (These crystal gates are shown on the main map of the maze by flashing areas). The bottom left crystal will transport your man into the parts store in the universe behind the three crystals.

Once in a universe you are twisted and rotated around the robot part it contains and must blast it three times in the time you are allowed. Do this, and the component is deactivated. Bonus power is awarded whenever you deactivate a part, but the component is not added to your robot unless it is the next part in the sequence.

Throughout the game a digital power counter decrements - if you don't visit a node, enter a universe and deactivate a robot part before your energy runs out, it's time to start another game. You start with three lives, however, and if energy's getting desperately low you can enter a universe, deactivate a part and gain the bonus energy. If the part is not in the correct sequence, then you keep the energy but lose a life.

Producer: Electric Dreams
Price: £9.95
Language: machine code
Author: Sandy White, Angela Sutherland and Paul Fik



The Mask which taunts you until you succeed in assembling a robot in I, OF THE MASK

CRITICISM
'This highly original program got many a gasp when it was loaded up in the office. If you merely look at the graphics objectively they're not that hot, but once you get into playing the game it's possible to get totally lost within the i