FRED
£9.99

The premiere release of FRED magazine's software arm, Impatience is a twin-pack of mouse-compatible puzzler games. The main attraction of the pack is Triltex, a match-the-tiles affair with a sneaky twist: the titles are stacked anything up to seven deep. Naturally, this means you have no idea if your cunning strategy is correct until you reach the bottom of the stacks, and usually find one tile left over. Each of the twenty levels is scattered with special symbols, such as transporters, flippers and the boon-or-bane bombs which destroy their four adjacent tiles. Be warned - this game is knuckle-gnawingly hard!

It's also incredibly likeable, what with the presentation buffed to a shine and loads of friendly features such as a password system, and a non-fatal time limit that awards an extra life if you beat it. To put it simply, Triltex is the kind of game you'll switch off in fury, but swear to beat next time.

The Viking Game runs at a different pace altogether. It's an adaptation of a 1000-year-old strategic brow-furrower for two players, defender and invader. The game centres on the capture or escape of the defender's King. Moving like the rook in chess, pieces are taken by being trapped between two of the opponent's; or in the case of the King, by being completely hemmed in. It's smartly programmed, but there's some awful slow music and an unnecessarily obscured King. It's all good, clean fun but, to be honest, I can't see what advantage it has over the board game.

So there you have it. A sizzler and a fairly good supporting act - a lot for your crumpled tenner. It's got to be a Megagame. And it is. Hurrah!

FREDSoft
SAM 512K
£9.99

You've tried tiling the roof and bathroom, now it's time to slap on your scruffy overalls for Impatience, a new two-game pack for the SAM 512K (the new name for SAM Coupe, by the way) which, surprisingly enough, includes a tile game!

In the 3D-style Triltex, match together and eliminate tiles with similar patterns and colours. Cursor keys, joystick or mouse control the pointer in 20 levels of frustration.

Five kinds of special tile appear later in the game. Bombs blow away neighbouring tiles, Flippers swop the positions of the four tiles around it. Mystery tiles only show their faces when 50,000 is scored, Teleporters swop positions and Twirlers flip the tiles clockwise or anti-clockwise.

Triltex's presentation is great, with slick, well drawn graphics and music that begs to be turned up! Some people moan there are too many puzzle games on the SAM. This may be true, but who cares when they're as addictive and professional as this?

The Viking Game is an ancient board game from the Viking Empire, 900 AD. (Unfortunately, there's not even a sniff of wanton maidens or Skok-quaffing, horn-helmeted, long-bearded, pillaging Scandinavians.) At first glance, it's simlar to both chess and Draughts but once in play you soon notice the difference. It's for two players only so you need to find a partner. As a conversion of the board game it does it's job, but it isn't graphically impressive.

Impatience is a good purchase for any SAM puzzle freak. It's not as playable as Revelation's Hexagonia but I'm sure there's room for both in your software collection.