Producer: Romik 16K
£6.99
Author: Dave Noonan

This is a 3D 'corridor' type game. The maze is on three floors and your mission is to find the missing keys and return them to the start position. Then you must find a bomb and defuse it before it detonates (against the clock). To make the task harder there are monsters moving about the maze that can be killed by one of your limited supply of grenades. To help you the monsters can be seen on a radar screen. The 3D graphic representation is very good and easy to visualise. The keyboard positions are well thought out and a joystick may be used. The monsters appear very suddenly in front of you for a second before you lose your life - likes scene from Alien! Five skill levels and an absorbing game. Good value for money.

Producer: Romik 16K
£6.99
Author: Dave Noonan

This is a 3D 'corridor' type game. The maze is on three floors and your mission is to find the missing keys and return them to the start position. Then you must find a bomb and defuse it before it detonates (against the clock). To make the task harder there are monsters moving about the maze that can be killed by one of your limited supply of grenades. To help you the monsters can be seen on a radar screen. The 3D graphic representation is very good and easy to visualise. The keyboard positions are well thought out and a joystick may be used. The monsters appear very suddenly in front of you for a second before you lose your life - like a scene from Alien! Five skill levels and an absorbing game. Good value for money.

Producer: Romik 16K
£6.99
Author: Dave Noonan

This is a 3D 'corridor' type game. The maze is on three floors and your mission is to find the missing keys and return them to the start position. Then you must find a bomb and defuse it before it detonates (against the clock). To make the task harder there are monsters moving about the maze that can be killed by one of your limited supply of grenades. To help you the monsters can be seen on a radar screen. The 3D graphic representation is very good and easy to visualise. The keyboard positions are well thought out and a joystick may be used. The monsters appear very suddenly in front of you for a second before you lose your life - likes scene from Alien! Five skill levels and an absorbing game. Good value for money.

Memory: 16K
Price: £6.99

Maze games for the Spectrum are being produced in ever-greater quantities. In some cases that is justified - a maze game can be exciting, skilful, and even original. 3D Monster Chase is none of those things.

A standard, three-dimensional representation of a maze is shown, through which the player must move to find ever-increasing numbers of keys and to defuse the bombs which, for no good reason, appear whenever keys are found. An additional feature is the monsters, resembling three-legged Easter eggs, which can kill the hapless maze-farer unless bombed out of existence by the grenades provided.

Mazes are such a standard feature of Spectrum software that the monsters in them must be spectacular enough, or the purpose exciting enough, to tempt the player to enter. Being killed or finding a key in this game both produce similar feelings of lack of concern in the player.

Produced for the Spectrum by Romik Software Ltd, 277 Argyll Avenue, Slough, Berkshire.

The Romik Galactic Trooper and 3D Monster Chase are competent and bug-free games but do not have sufficient new ideas to make them attractive in 1984.

The idea of 3D Monster Chase is not to chase a monster, as the name rather implies, but to collect seven keys which are hidden in a three level maze. Unfortunately, there are complications: key one has to be found first, you then return to base. Once you have made it back, a bomb is triggered. If you do not find the bomb before it explodes.a life is lost. If the bomb is found in time, it must be taken back to the start. Here the sequence starts all over again but this time both keys one and two must be found, and in that order only.

Just to make it that bit more difficult, as if it needs it, at least one monster is always likely to be following you. Obviously, their sole aim in life is to end your life!

All this goes on in a 3D maze, and although the monsters themselves do get bigger as they approach, they are still flat. There are five levels of play, even on the lowest level I have yet to find the second key. At the top of the screen is a radar, showing your position and those of the monsters and you have a small supply of grenades which are used to destroy monsters at the correct range.

Verdict: The game is fast, though inherently jerky due to the nature of the maze. Finding the keys is no easy matter, let alone disposing of the bomb. Killing monsters is a matter of luck to start with as you are told that the grenades work at the correct range, but what is the correct range?! The chance of finishing the game, even on level one seem pretty small. Personally, I feel the game should have been made a little easier on level one so as to stop the novice giving up in despair. On the whole I fell that 3D Monster Maze is a good game, but not particularly original.