Producer: Players
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Sam Garforth and Steven Cork

A naughty Gypsy has cast a wicked spell which means that you can't get back into your castle. To make matters worse, you've been incarcerated in a Crystal Sphere. Only by finding the magic chalice of Cagara can you break the spell and get back home.

To accompany you in your quest is your favourite hamster, Eric. Some help, eh? But little Eric packs a powerful punch. Somehow he's managed to grow helicopter blades! This means that when you release him he can put a timely end to the various nestles that are out to stop you finding the chalice.

Moving out from the castle grounds you enter a world of mazes, caverns, and exotic gardens. Sometimes you have to travel in the dark, with only one section of a maze in view. There are also hidden moms, some of them cul-de-sacs, where you must avoid getting cornered by the grizzly ghouls in pursuit.

The monsters come in a variety of forms: animate g les, whirling disks and crystalline spheres. There are also flying arrows and the odd laser beam or two. And don't get too close to the colourful hedgerows as nestles can leap out at any moment.

Finding out where the chalice is hidden is really a matter of trial-and-error. There are no screen directions, but there are various objects along the way which come in handy. The sword is particularly useful as it can be used to slay monsters: they have to be stabbed in the left ear - apparently their most vulnerable spot!

Without the chalice there's no chance of returning home. And don't expect any compliments at the end of the game. It's not nice being called a 'useless worm'!

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q up, A down, O left, P right, bottom row to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: nothing special
Graphics: uninspiring
Sound: above average
Skill levels: one
Screens: PLAYERS didn't know!

Hmmm...! This game, to say the least, is pretty tricky, in fact, I'd say that It's almost impossible. The graphics are uninteresting, the characters are very primitive and the backgrounds are unveiled. The sound is pretty much run-of-the-mill stuff, although there are a couple of fair to average tunes on the title screen and a few spot effects during the game. Generally, there is nothing here that I haven't seen before. Another less than wonderful game from purees I'm afraid.

I had great difficulty trying to get Cagara to load and once I did, I must admit. I wish I hadn't. The presentation is not all that bad for a budget game, and the sound is nearly decent too. I just found the game much too boring. The keyboard response is very good but the graphics a re very poor compared with most budget stuff - they're small and colourful. Even the most excitable person wouldn't be impressed with this one.

Cagara is really weird - not in the sense of it being an entertainingly original game, either. The game, even for £2.99, is far too simple, and though it moves at a reasonable pace, gets boring after only a few minutes. I've seen the scenario more than once before as well: recover the chalice and get out? The sound on the title screen is the best bit of it. The graphics are very boring, with only a border around most of the screens, and some very flickery characters. Even for the price, Cagara is one game that I wouldn't think about buying.

WHAT CAN I GET FOR £2.99

A cut above. £2.99 is still a budget price but it ought to mean that you get a little bit extra, a little more thought, originality, more programming expertise. We look at the budget elite and ask, "Can you tell the difference?"

CAGARA
Label: Players
Author: Sam Garforth, Steven Cork
Price: £2.99
Joystick: various
Reviewer: John Gilbert

Cagara may be big, but it ain't brilliant. Sure, it has three or four different types of screen. The hitch is they are Sabre Wulf and Atic Atac type screens coupled with a massive maze.

Your on-screen persona is a silver sphere in which you've been trapped by an evil gypsy. You're probably a sphere because the programmers couldn't animate a figure properly. The mission is to find the Chalice of Cagara. You also discover other useful objects to help you on your way such as a cross, a key and a castle.

One character-sized blob will speed up your progress while another - which does look something like a castle - will take you from the doorstep of one fortress to another.

Your ball is accompanied by a rabid, red, hampster called Eric who will attack any marauding monster blobs when dropped.

Mazes are the most difficult areas of the game from which to escape monsters. They travel at nearly twice the speed of your own jerking animated movement and they can float over the walls of the maze.

One nice touch is that some mazes are masked so you can only see one move ahead at a time. That way you can't see the monsters until they're upon you which is more interesting and, incidentally, it's the only aspect of the game I really enjoyed.

The mazes, which try their best to look three-dimensional, are all of a similar construction and you will probably give up, like I did, long before you get out of one.

Players
£1.99

You have been teleported to the land of Cagara by managing to get yourself caught in an evil gypsy's crystal ball. Presumably, you crossed her palm with cupro-nickel instead of silver. The only way you can regain your freedom is to explore the castles, mazes and jungles in Cagara and find the magic chalice. A reasonable if hardly original storyline. An element of originality is brought into play by the fact that you are accompanied on this adventure by your sulky pet hamster called Eric who for some strange reason has sprouted helicopter blades!

Not that you would notice, for he is depicted on screen as a small red blob with spikes on who always seems to run off the first screen, never to be seen again. This is a trifle unfortunate as he is supposed to fight your battles for you. Instead, when you (represented on screen by a medium sized blob) are chasing through a maze and a monster appears (a big blob) you tend to get killed automatically as it can fly through hedges and you can't. One contact by a monster and it is curtains for you - game over time. There are other ways of defending yourself. Scattered around the grounds are a number of objects. You can only carry one of these at a time and must work out which thing does what. This is mode more difficult for you as the items are such small blobs that they are instantly unrecognisable. The only one that looked like anything was a pink castle that teleported you to another castle.

The rooms have equally non stunning graphics, the highlight of the jungle chambers being whether they have two three or four exits. The game looks as if it was written when the Spectrum first came out. Cagara is so bad, it is almost worth buying for that very reason.