Loco-Motion

Publisher: Mastertronic
Price: £2.50
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Fuller

A gem has turned up in Mastertronic's range of budget software.

Locomotion is similar to Incentive's Confuzion, which itself was by no means original. Despite that it is surprisingly addictive with well graded difficulty levels.

You are a track layer on the railways trying to lay a section of track ahead of a train before it catches up and goes off the rails.

The track is lying around in jumbled sections and you have to create order from chaos in the same way as those slide puzzles where you have one empty space into which to move the tiles.

Assembling the track within the time limit is simple at first but as you move from London to the continent, the tracks from Paris and other stations become progressively more difficult to unjumble and piece together.

The game can be slowed down by depressing the fire button - that will give you one minute's breathing space before the train charges ahead at full speed. Coal and water should be laid along the train's route when ever possible to earn bonus points.

Up to four players can play this simple game which for its price is a bargain. Well worth digging into your pockets for.