Platformers have been around from about the early to mid-Eighties, and although they are less popular now, they still have some following. There are at least two platformers supported on the Revo's EPOC operating system, and one of them is David Sansome and Kyle Clark's freeware Space Exodus.

Platformers, if you haven't played one before, are generally a mix of action and strategy in which your character must run and jump through a level to the exit. Since there are no moving 'enemies' in Space Invaders, it tends towards the latter, being mostly a puzzle game.

When you first begin, you can opt to try a tutorial level in which you are told what to do. Unfortunately, on the Revo, the top quarter or so of the screen is obscured by the instruction box, so when your character comes up to this part of the level you have to guess where you are. This is unfortunate - maybe it would be better if the level screen scrolled down or the instruction box would disappear when you pressed a key?

The game itself starts off fairly simple, but by the end becomes quite puzzling. You must avoid the spikes, collect pass cards to go past doors and optionally gather 'metamorphic jelly', which can be any one of a number of items including a gold bar, extra lives, whiskey (this makes you drunk and reverses the controls) or even an atomic bomb which blows you up if you can't defuse it.

Also, if you amass enough crystals (also obtained through jelly), you can trade them for various special items. I never could work out what a 'Medi-kit' was for, though, due to slightly sparse dialogue-based help.

The game cannot be saved, but this isn't a major problem, since the main level pack contains less than ten levels.

A few extra levels can be downloaded from the Space Exodus Web site - the download I had included both the original Space Exodus pack and an extra February 2000 level, as well as a level editor so that you can create levels yourself.

Generally, Space Exodus is a good distraction - it took me about an hour to an hour and a half to finish it - but it could do with some more levels to keep you playing. Hopefully in the future these will become available, due to the level editor.