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.

THE MIRROR CRACK'D

MAKER: Positive Image Software
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £5.95

Ever get the feeling you should never have got out of bed? I start playing this adventure, and before I even go anywhere, I find out I've been cursed with the face of a frog. Come on you lot, I've always been told that I resemble a rather handsome ferret. The point of this game is far from cosmic - you have to find the evil sorcerer in order to restore your good looks. Vanity of vanities!

A pleasant enough pastime though, the graphics are adequate but not mind-blowing, the only annoyance is you have to enter INVENTORY in full. The nasties are mostly on a classical theme, gorgons, basilisks and so forth, so a knowledge of myth may be helpful. Positive Image deserve credit for checking the player's gender at the start of the game. Truly these are people of elevated consciousness.

All right, as long ass you don't mind being seen in public looking like an amphibian.