Producer: Addictive
Retail Price: £8.95
Author: Siegfried Kurtz

Addictive Games are best known for simulation games such as the monster-selling football Manager, but this new release shows the Bournemouth-based company taking a completely new direction.

Kirel features a cute frog-eyed character who hops around the seventy 3D screens that make up his world in search of bombs to defuse and objects to collect. Kirel can only climb one step at a time on a screen, so he must pick up and drop blocks as he goes along, building staircases and bridges as they are needed. You can only move to the next screen when all the bombs on the current level have been defused.

Each level has to be completed within a certain time-limit - the amount of time remaining is indicated by a fuse trailing from the floor, which smoulders quietly away. If Kirel doesn't move fast enough and runs out of time, the little marauding meringue explodes. Contact with patrolling monsters saps energy, and can also lead to death.

Once all the bombs on a screen have been defused by jumping on them, an exit icon shows pointing the way to get onto the next screen. If Kirel leaves the screen inside the time limit the score is increased.

The Bionic Battle Bun, as he is known to his friends in the patisserie business, roams around the screens searching for cakes to eat and arrow blocks to collect. Monsters are allergic to cake and are destroyed if Kirel touches one while he has a cake in his inventory. Arrow blocks give Kirel another section of bridge, while bags of sweeties and sugar replenish his energy levels. Little balls give Kirel more time to complete the current level.

Kirel has four lives per screen, and the status area on the bottom left-hand side of the screen shows the number of lives, cakes and bridge building units he has as well as his energy level.

Other useful items to keep your bulging eyes peeled for are cubes, which destroy immovable walls and pyramids, and transporter networks represented by shimmering curtains or circles, which can be used to move Kirel around the screen.

COMMENTS

Control keys: 0 pick up/put down, 1 rotate right, 2 turn round, 3 rotate left, SPACE to pause, ENTER to continue, B build bridge, E up, S to play game, T to play training game, VT abort game
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: no problems
Use of colour: monochromatic screens
Graphics: very neat 3D platforms
Sound: spot effects only
Skill levels: two modes, training and play
Screens: 70

Well, well! Addictive have been relative quiet since the golden oldie Football Manager, so it's nice to see them publishing such a fun puzzle game. More or less everything (except sound) has been exploited to the full to bring idea to fruition. The star of the game jerks a little bit, but other things make up for this. Generally the graphics are nicely represented, but the games real high is its playability. I think it is really good, clean, puzzle solving fun. The title screen flickers a lot, but the effect is there, and it works quite well. Addictive and fun to play. Not worthy of a Smash, but well worth a good few day's attention.

Kirel is definitely one of the most original games ideas around on the Spectrum at the moment, and contains some excellent 3D graphics. At first the gameplay is very slow, but I found it was relatively easy to get used to and suited the cute little character you control. The time bomb time limit is a very effective idea and makes you hurry around with more urgency than a counter would encourage. The graphics are set in great 3D perspective, although some situations seemed a little awkward to work out on the later levels. The other characters are well drawn and the baddies smoothly animated. The only thing I missed was a little tune to listen to, but that hardly counts against the game. Kirel is a brilliant game which anyone can get straight into playing. Definitely worth buying if you want something that is a little different from the 'run of the mill' Spectrum software.

I was initially very impressed, but after a few goes the novelty of the pretty graphics wore off and I was left with a fairly mediocre 'jumping around collecting things' game. The graphics are very good and the characters are well drawn, although a little jerky when they move. The sound is limited but adequate I suppose. Controlling your blob or whatever it is, is difficult at first but after a few practice games it becomes second nature. It took me a long time to get into, but once you got on with it, I found it fairly playable and addictive, although it isn't the sort of game I'd get hooked on. Not a bad game - it'll take a lot of determination to complete.

Addictive
£8.95

Strange. Unexpected! An oddity, even!!! That's Kirel, the new offering from that football crazy crowd at Addictive.

Strange because it's a million miles from its previous league topper, Football Manager, the simulation that's kept Addictive over the moon and helped it survive several own goals - remember Software Star.

Unexpected because its a smooth running arcade game, not the long in the tooth Basic associated with Addictive. And an oddity because though it joins the Ultimate lookalike throng, it doesn't play at all like Knightlore!

Kirel is more of a block shifting puzzle in 3D: the chance to be the architect of an alien landscape. The eponymous hero is a cute critter who lives on an eight by eight grid in a sugar cube city (nothing to do with Amstrad). It's the ideal environment for anybody who likes climbing stairs - or would be if it wasn't for the monsters and bombs?

The bombs are really his main concern because he has to clear them in a constant race against time, the inexorable passing of which is shown by a constantly fizzing fuse. The aliens merely get in the way and leap on Kirel to sap his strength - a relatively minor irritation when the world's about to vanish in a shower of sparks!

Unluckily not all of the bombs are accessible at the start because Kirel can only climb a height one block at a time - after all, he hasn't got any legs (and that's quite different from being legless). But here's where his Wimpey skills come in! Kirel kan karry one block at a time, providing it's not from the base level. So reaching the bombs is a question of rearranging the landscape until there are neat stairs to the correct level. Another clever ability our hero has is to build bridges in the direction he's facing, though these are in limited supply.

With that sorted out he can concentrate on the objects he'll find on his travels, namely cake, arrows, sweets and balls. Cake kills monsters when he leaps on them, arrows earn extra bridges; sweets restore stamina (and rot your teeth); and balls - perhaps a throwback from Football Manager - slow down the sparkling fuse.

Finally there's the exit, that'll only appear once all the bombs have been defused, which happens when Kirel moves onto them. The screen isn't completed - and the fuse continues burning - until you leap onto this and transport to the next level.

There's also a training mode, without the terrible deaths, that'll let you get acquainted with the screens. I thought this might make it all too easy but even after a rehearsal I found the fuse was running out before I could reach the exit.

This is a game you'll either love or hate. You'll find it absolutely infuriating or totally addictive. I played it for hours. Give it a try. It could just be one of the cleverest games of the year.

Publisher: Addictive Games
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K

Addictive games is best known for Football Manager - a game so intrinsically well designed that it has been converted to every machine under the sun and is still (several years later) the most successful management game ever. Although Addictive has released other games over the years none have had anything like the success of Manager. Now it hopes to change all that with Kirel.

Kirel looks, in its use of an edge-on 3D viewpoint, a little like Knight Lore and Alien 8. Were Kirel actually like those games it would of course be exceptionally tedious. Enough is enough. But despite the wizzo graphics you could argue that Kirel is barely an arcade game at all, or at least say that the skills it requires are quite different from the usual dodge, blast and collect, sweaty palmed instant reaction brigade. With Kirel you have to think, and think very fast.

Somewhere in its development Kirel was related to that ancient arcade game where you had to shunt a boot to a bomb - reaching it before it blew to bits. Kirel has the same basic idea, on each new screen you must get to and leap on, a bomb or several bombs, before time runs out and the biggest bomb of the lot expresses itself in the only way it knows how. In Kirel this all takes place in 3D and is made difficult not only by some nasty monsters that look like seaweed on a bad day but the mental torment of working out how to get where you want to go.

There are 70 screens. On each there are dozens of blocks arranged in all kinds of patterns. Getting to some of the bombs is going to involve manipulating the blocks, building block bridges and viewing the problem from several different angles (you can change viewpoint like Ant Attack).

This would be comparatively simple were it not for the fact that the Kirel character - a blob with two big eyes - can only 'climb' one step at a time, ie it cannot bounce on top of any block more than one block higher than the block on which it is standing.

Kirel can pick up the block it's standing on and drop down one level but if that then means there are no adjacent blocks one above, below or at the same level as Kirel you have achieved precisely nothing. Get the picture (if you do without re-reading the above several times you should do well at this game).

Kirel is pleasing to the eye, even though 3D screens don't have the 'gosh wow' impact they once had. I found the mixture of block structures and bizarre objects like the cheese gave the whole game a wonderfully surreal touch. Kirel and the monsters (a name for a group if ever I heard one) are very Ultimate-style wacky with amusing (if jerky) animation giving them some personality.

Addictive have faced the old Spectrum 'any colour you like so long as it doesn't move' attribute problem and like all sensible people waved the white flag - all the screens are two-colour only. Can't say I minded much though.

Sound is surprisingly effective, perhaps because it doesn't try to say anything other than squelch and burp at the appropriate moments. The squelches and burps are, however, most effective.

JUDGEMENT

I loved it. Addictive say the game has 'a lot of original ideas'. That's pushing it, but it certainly puts a lot of old ideas from other programs together in a new way. It has all the thrills of an arcade game whilst testing your reasoning far more than your trigger finger.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Activision
PRICE: £8.95

After a relatively quite time, Addictive Games are back on the scene with the excellent Kirel, a nifty 70 screen, three dimensional arcade offering.

Sources at Addictive say this is the first of what is hoped to be one new game released each month. If the same standard is kept up it should be an interesting summer.

The idea is to move Kirel, a cute little chap, around the screens to find the transporter networks, grab energy supplies and defuse bombs.

By moving blocks around, Kirel can build staircases, move obstructions, and make holes - to enable him to exit from the screen and onto the next.

There are various objects Kirel should collect.

Cakes help him to destroy monsters, arrows give him extra bridges, sweets and bags of sugar restore stamina and collecting balls give extra time.

But beware the stamina-sapping monsters which infest the screens, and the pyramids which are impassable.

A nice part of the game is the way you can rotate screens through 90 and 180 degrees. Pressing the space bar finds Kirel for you (assuming you've lost him).

The screen layout is clear and uncluttered. The screen number is in the top left corner and block indicator top right. Lives, cakes, bridges and energy levels can be found in the bottom left hand corner. The squiggly line coming from the main graphics is the time fuse.

Spectrum
Addictive
Arcade Adventure
£8.95

Addictive Software is big on quantity but a new release from it is usually worth a look. The last hit, Football Manager, is still in the charts years after its first appearance.

Kirel is, at first sight, yet another 3D isometric arcade adventure but the more you play it the more you realise it has that little spark of originality and charm which can make a game stand out from the crowd. The eponymous Kirel is a jolly, slightly-squashed-looking character who has trouble with stairs. He can slide up only one level at a time but he has the useful ability of being able to swallow parts of the landscape and regurgitate them elsewhere. In that way, our hero can tackle huge mountains.

The reason for the little chap clumping around the place is to defuse a few bombs left lying carelessly round the screen. Naturally they are time-bombs and the fuse is running low. Defuse the bombs and it is on to the next screen. Do that 70 times and you have cracked it. Your bonus depends on time taken.

Also on the screens various nasties will try and sap your stamina by the ungainly tactic of sitting on you. You can squash them if you have eaten enough cake lately - presumably that makes our flabby friend heavy enough to inflict lasting damage.

Other objects include transporters for rapid movement around screens, invisible walls, sweets to build your energy and arrows which allow you to build bridges. All that variety gives plenty of scope for fiendish logical puzzles which must be solved against the clock. Not exactly Alien 8 but great fun all the same.

ADDICTIVE GAMES MAY SEEM TO HAVE BEEN LYING DOGGO SINCE THEIR HEYDAY AND THE SUCCESS OF FOOTBALL MANAGER, BUT THEY'RE BACK AND LIVING UP TO THEIR NAME WITH THEIR LATEST RELEASE, KIREL.

Addictive Games
£7.95

This isn't an easy game to describe - to say that it combines elements of Knight Lore and Pacman makes it sound derivative and doesn't really do it justice. Kirel is the name of a blob-like character with bulgy eyes and a silly grin, who finds himself on a board upon which layers of blocks are arranged in complex three dimensional maze structures.

The board is eight blocks wide by eight deep and the blocks can be piled up in layers half a dozen high. This means that there's enormous scope for creating structures with the blocks and the game contains a total of 70 screens.

In addition to the obstacles created by these blocks each screen contains a number of objects that have to be collected within a time limit in order to move on to the next screen. If you don't finish the screens in time there is a lit fuse under the board that burns down and blows the whole thing up Also slithering about the boards are strange jelly-like creatures that can drain Kirel's energy level if he comes into contact with them.

To complete each screen you have to guide Kirel to the lit bombs hidden in various corners of the maze. These are sometimes hidden beneath layers of blocks which means that even with the 'reveal' function that pauses the game and give you an x-ray view of the maze you've still got to puzzle pretty hard over how to reach the bombs. Also positioned within the maze are transporter pads, arrows which, when collected, allow Kirel to build bridges across sections of the maze, cake and sweets which boost his energy and allow him to kill the jelly monsters.

So far it might not sound like anything particularly exciting but there is one more element that makes the game wonderfully addictive When he's wandering around the maze. Kirel can only jump up or down one block at a time but many of the objects he'll have to reach are tucked away on top of high piles of blocks or down at the bottom of pits surrounded by blocks which makes them inaccessible. So, in order to be able to get to all these objects Kirel can pick up and drop one block at a time and build his own stairways and ledges and, in effect, rebuild the maze to suit himself. This leads to some frantic scenes as you rush around the screen moving blocks and trying to get to the bombs before the time limit runs out.

This is one of those games where you can almost see what you need to do but can't quite get it done in time, so you keep on trying to beat the speed limit or to change your tactics in an attempt to get onto the next screen. The time limit and the monsters add an element of arcade action to the game, but this is nicely balanced by the strategy and quick thinking needed to plan ahead and rebuild the maze structure as you go along.

In a game like this the quality of the graphics and animation are less important than in most arcade games, but Kirel is nonetheless well designed and animated. All the graphics are large and clearly drawn despite the amount of stuff that is cluttering up the screen. And there are some nice touches, such as the ability to alter the viewpoint so that you can see in and around the maze, which show that the programmers have paid a lot of attention to detail.

I don't have any real criticisms of Kirel, though I do think it would have been nice to see user-definable keyboard controls, and some of the purple screens are a bit rough on the eyeballs. The time limit on the screens is a bit short too, though there is a practice mode in which you can have all the time you want.

I have to admit that I wasn't expecting Kirel to be anything special when I first loaded it up - after all it does use elements from some quite old games and there's nothing particularly state-of-the-art' about the game - but it really does manage to mix all these old ingredients and come up with a brand new recipe that's highly addictive and deserves to rival the success of Football Manager.