Producer: Positive Image
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: Machine code and BASIC
Author: Tom Cannavan

Beware the haunted warehouse! Here you must get as many men as you can across the warehouse floor and up the ladder to safety.

The ghosts don't like their peace shattered so they will do several things to try and stop you, like throwing boxes and barrels, they may chase you or just try and block your path. Your energy is limited and it goes even faster when you jump about.

The screen depicts a crosssection through the warehouse. Your men line up below the floor and a short ladder takes them to the main floor. Above there are five areas divided by vertical walls that almost touch the floor, allowing the man to pass underneath but not jump. A rail runs along the length of the warehouse, and blue rails a little higher up. At the extreme left, a ladder runs up to the floor and safety - well almost! Rolling along the floor from left to right come the barrels. These may be jumped over by leaping up and hanging on the rail until the barrel has passed. In the last area, boxes are being thrown down which must be dodged. As the game progresses, there are more barrels at different speeds and boxes start appearing in the other areas too. Once on the ladder and up to the top. safety is assured - except on later levels when a ghost appears and walks across at the last second - it's to be avoided. Later still the ghosts may descend to the warehouse floor.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z/X left/right, 0 to jump
Joystick: none
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: detailed, movement by block character
Sound: poor
Skill levels: progressive difficulty through 12 stages
Lives: 5
Originality: the idea behind Bewarehouse is really quite new, although a similar concept is used in Sinclair's Stop The Express

This game is totally original, one of the main features which attracts me to it. By about level 4 the game becomes almost impossible to play! Timing is important. The graphics tend to be a little bit on the primitive side, but overall they are colourful and well drawn. An addictive game from an unknown company.

Bewarehouse contains small and rather jerky but colourful graphics. The idea of jumping up and holding on is a good one, but I don't think its lasting appeal is very strong.

I really enjoyed playing Bewarehouse because the use of the keys is good, and the skill requirements are well judged to make a fast and surprisingly difficult game. True, the graphics are nothing to write home about, but this is definitely one of those games where the idea is more important and the graphics do not detract from its playability. I do like the word BOP which appears for a quarter of a second after a box has hit you - at first you think your eyes are playing tricks. It's a simple game, and quite addictive because, although repetitive, it does offer a challenge in timing skill.

FAIRY TALES AND FACTORIES IN GLASGOW

BEWAREHOUSE
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95

FROG FACE
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95

Life in a Glaswegian warehouse is evidently dangerous to judge from Bewarehouse. Glasgow-based Positive Image has created a game in which death goes hand in hand with the boredom of manual labour.

You must climb up through the various floors of the warehouse, avoiding barrels which roll along the floor. At later levels the warehouse acquires a few ghosts which chase you with murderous intent.

Unfortunately the game is a lame version of Donkey Kong with no gorilla, no maiden to rescue, no variety in the levels and very little in the way of addictive excitement. The cassette insert describes programmer Tom Canavan as one of Scotland's finest. I shudder to think what the others are like.

Frog Face, a text adventure from the same company, is rather more attractive. The program credits the Quill adventure system, but includes a number of attractive pictures of locations.

You have had your face turned into a frog by the evil Meegan, and must find a magic potion to restore your natural beauty. The game setting is clearly based on the land of fairytales, with whispering flowers, lucky silver spoons, royal castles and the like, although there are darker and more deadly creatures as well.

The only real fault is that it is very easy to be killed in a somewhat arbitrary fashion early on. Death traps are by no means a bad thing in adventures, but there should not be too many of them.

That said, Frog Face is a pleasant romp, and since there is an option to play as a man or a woman, may have a wider appeal than the more macho monster-bashing adventures.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
CONTROL: Keys
FROM: Positive Image, £5.95

There's a quaint feeling about this game, although it won't really charm you if you've paid out good money for it. It's an old-fashioned jump the balls and avoid the falling boxes game with equally ancient graphics.

The animation is slightly jerky and the game is very boring. On higher levels ghosts appear but they don't make it any more haunting.