Producer: MacMillan Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.95 each
Language: machine code
Author: Widgit Software

I must confess that I'd never heard of Orm and Cheep before these programs landed on my desk. The publicity handouts, however, informed me that Orm (a worm) and Cheep (a yellow bird of some sort) are well-loved cartoon characters from a TV programme 'watched by 72% of the 4-15 viewing audience'. Both games are marketed as being suitable for 'kids of all ages' - a very misleading statement. I know it can be very difficult to categorise games into neat age ranges, but what on earth are 'kids of all ages'? The handout, in fact, claims that 'whether you are 6, 16 or 60 you'll find Orm and Cheep a lot of fun'. Not being any of these ages myself (no, I'm not telling you how old I am?) I invited some kids ranging from 5 to 14 years of age, to look at the programs with me.

Both Narrow Squeaks and The Birthday Party begin with a reaction tester to set the level of play. The words 'Orm and Cheep' drop, one by one, towards a horizontal line and the player has to press a key to stop them as near to the line as possible. Having thus set the starting level, the difficulty of the game adjusts according to the player's skill. Narrow Squeaks contains four games, and I'm afraid we found them all totally boring and pointless. The instructions are extremely difficult to find for a start (they are hidden away in the text describing the game) and the children certainly had a lot of difficulty working out what to do as the explanations, once you have found them, are far from adequate. The objective in each game turns out to be surprisingly simple and totally uninspiring.

The Birthday Party is described as 'a compelling graphic adventure' but it can hardly be said to fit into the adventure game genre - and we definitely didn't find it 'compelling'. The idea is to move Cheep around the countryside to find animals invited to Orm's birthday party, and accompany them safely to the party having outwitted the enemy on the way. We found the noise of Cheep flapping his wings particularly irritating as the game progressed - and there is no facility for turning off the sound!

The graphics in both programs are quite nice, but I'm afraid that's the only positive thing I can say. These Orm and Cheep games got a definite thumbs down from all the testers, with the five year old saying they were the worst programs he'd seen. One parent, in fact, told me that if he'd bought the games for his children, he'd have returned them to the shop and tried to get his money back! 'Absolutely awful' just about sums them up!

COMMENTS
Control keys: any key, which keeps the game simple for the very young child
Joystick: not applicable
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: bright and attractive
Graphics: appealing
Sound: maddening, and impossible to switch off
Skill levels: adjusted automatically

Publisher: Macmillan Software
Price: £6.95
Memory: 48K

Taking cartoon characters from the television and using them for software isn't always successful, but two games by Macmillan Software work quite well.

Both are programmed by Widgit, by now veterans in this field. Orm and Cheep - The Birthday Party is a younger style Phineas Fogg. There are no words to read and it is essentially a maze game.

Cheep has to overcome certain problems before bringing all his friends to Orm's birthday party, but first he must find his friends. Mole is the most difficult to find.

Elementary maps can certainly help. Decisions are easily made by pressing a key when a signpost flashes.

Narrow Squeaks is a collection of four games, mainly concerned with logic puzzles. The graphics are good and I particularly liked Rat's Game where you have to move each of the animals out of a hollow tree trunk.

Both games appeal to the 4-7 age group and a useful addition to the family library.